By Elinor Mills
December 23, 2008, 11:00 AM PST

Consumers continued to face online threats to their personal data and finances in 2008 from bigger, badder botnets to scams exploiting the economic downturn to more security holes in trusted sites.

But some quick action on the part of a security researcher and collaboration among Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and other companies in simultaneously releasing patches for a major flaw in an important protocol likely prevented a major attack on the Internet.

Dan Kaminsky, director of penetration testing for IOActive, warned security software vendors about the problem with the Domain Name System that translates Web addresses into numerical Internet Protocol addresses in a secret meeting in March. And on July 8 vendors released their patches in an unprecedented, synchronized effort.

While the efforts may have staved off a complete shutdown of the Internet, the flaw was still exploited in small, random attacks after the patches were released, Kaminsky said in August. Meanwhile, popular sites like Facebook became attractive targets for virus writers.