Tastes in celebrity are changing, with Jessica Biel now having the infamous honour of being the most popular topic for malware producers, it has been reported.

Brad Pitt is no longer the number one most lethal celebrity to get embroiled with on the internet, with Jessica Biel screensavers having a 50 per cent success rate of deploying malicious coding onto someone's computer, McAfee revealed.

Beyonce, Jennifer Aniston and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady landed second, third and fourth respectively.

Commenting on the trend, McAfee Avert Labs senior vice president Jeff Green told computing source V3: "Cyber criminals are star watchers too.

"They latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise. Consumers' obsessions with celebrity news and culture are harmless in theory but one bad download can cause a lot of damage to a computer."

Over half of new malware attacks can be attributed to Trojans, according to IBM's X-Force internet security group.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent).