You may be surprised that the overall rate of malware infections is at its lowest point in three years, at least according to one source (Engima Software) that measures these things through its own network of sensors deployed across the globe. Yet this average obscures a lot of other trends, such as that the rate here in St. Louis has actually not dropped all that much, putting my fair city at the number two spot for the most infected places to compute (Tampa is #1).

This is just one of the many news nuggets that you will get if you subscribe to my twice-weekly Inside Security email newsletter, a separate effort from Web Informant that is being done through the auspices of Inside.com. The company has started several other newsletters, including one on Teslas and one on virtual reality.

Also this week, two new forms of Mac-based malware have been discovered, one called Pirrit and one called Eleanor-A. For years the Mac has been a relative safe haven, especially when compared to Windows. But with the rise in its popularity comes a more tempting target for malware writers. The former one is a piece of adware that actually acts like an infection, while the latter comes as part of a fake document conversion tool called EasyDoc that is just a container for a collection of remote access Trojans that persist even after you try to delete the application.

Speaking of Safe Harbor, and by that I mean the EU’s prior privacy regulations that were struck down some time ago, there is now a replacement called Privacy Shield. I link to the new regulations, along with some insightful commentary at Ars Technica (for the non-lawyers) and at SociallyAwareBlog (for those that want more or who are lawyers themselves).

Finally, do you want to examine the code that ran the Apollo spacecraft guidance computers? Now, thanks to some diligent volunteers, you can on Github, provided you know how to read Assembler. The code contains copious nerd humor and 60s-era POV, along with modern day space enthusiast insider comments too. Houston, we have a program!

There is a lot more on my newsletter this week, including links to how to learn to become a CISO and other noteworthy security reports, so subscribe here now.