Security threats via IM and P2P seem to be the new thing to worry about. During last year, threats to said networks increased by more than twenty-fold. There is in fact a 2,200 percent increase over 2004, according to a study by security firm FaceTime Communications.

The research indicated that quarter-on-quarter increase in security incidents is occurring at a 90 per cent compound annual growth rate. The MSN network was found to have experienced the largest number of incidents in both 2004 and 2005. For 2005, 57 percent of IM incidents targeted MSN, 37 percent targeted AOL, and 6 percent targeted Yahoo!. Year-on-year growth rates were largest on the AOL network with a 1,300 percent increase of security incidents.
2005 has been witness to a dramatic change in hacker attacks across multiple networks, as compared to the previous year, where security incidents primarily spread via one network only.