WALTHAM, Mass. – Here's a growth industry that credit unions might want to be aware of: spam, virus and worm attacks through instant messaging applications. The IMlogic Threat Center (www.imloglc.com) says the number of such attacks through IM and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications have been increasing 50% each month so far this year. Financial institutions and other organizations, as well as consumers, are increasingly using such services, and so have the hackers targeting them. "Virus writers are now shifting the focus of their attack to instant messaging, which is seen as a largely unprotected channel into the enterprise," says Jon Sakoda, IMlogic CTO and vice president of products. Since Jan. 1, according to the center, there have been more than 30 widespread reported incidents of new IM/P2P viruses, worms and malicious code, with 70% of them targeting Microsoft applications MSN Messenger Client, Windows Messenger Client and MSN Network. The IMlogic Threat Center was created to help meet the IM and P2P threat and has the backing of Symantec, Sybari, McAfee, America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo.