Micro-targeted attacks on the rise

According to MessageLabs via ZDNet:

During March, MessageLabs intercepted 716 e-mail messages that were part of 249 targeted attacks aimed at 216 of its customers, the Gloucester, England-based provider of hosted e-mail filtering services said in a research report. Of the attacks, almost 200 consisted of a single malicious e-mail designed to infiltrate an organization, MessageLabs said.

Cyber-crooks are going where the money is and since they have a lot of ways to get money (extortion and identity theft spring to mind), theses attacks are on the rise.

The stealthy attacks are typically timed to arrive during the work day and commonly target organizations in electronics, aviation, public sector, retail and communications, MessageLabs said.

"The bad guys know which organizations have data worth stealing and are picking them out one by one," Alex Shipp, a senior technologist at MessageLabs, said in a statement.

I'm interested in knowing what happens after the email is opened and the mal-ware takes over. How does it escalate?