It's all about the money

A colleague asked me this week why on earth someone would write a virus. She seemed surprised when I told her that companies pay good money to virus and Trojan authors. If your programming skills are up to scratch, you have a good handle on Windows internals and perhaps most importantly, have few qualms about infecting other people's PCs, then you too can make a steady income from writing malicious code.

Malware has moved on from the days of Melissa and ILoveYou. Symantec estimates that nearly five million Windows machines connected to the Internet are infected with programs that allow the criminal underground to attack Web sites, extort money from gambling sites and plant adware on unsuspecting users' computers.

The Washington Post reported last month on two 21-year old Californians who received hefty prison sentences for planting adware programs on tens of thousands of computers in order to get commissions from advertisers.

If your programming skills are up to scratch, you have a good handle on Windows internals and have few qualms about infecting other people's PCs, then you too can make a steady income from writing malicious code.

Paul Furber, senior group writer, ITWeb

Sentenced this month were a trio of Russian extortionists - to eight years in prison. Russian authorities found them guilty of extorting nearly $4 million from e-commerce firms based in the UK.

Gambling and e-commerce sites are favourite targets for the controllers of botnets. Using the network of machines under their control, they can knock popular Web sites off the Internet, disrupt, normal service, and make business otherwise impossible - unless you pay up.

Internet Explorer (IE) has had more than its fair of security problems since it was first released to an unsuspecting Internet over 10 years ago. IE 7 improves on the previous version and is "good rather than great" according to most of the independent reviews around the Web this week. But it could be a juicy target just in time for the shopping season.

Malware seems to be seasonal and attacks increase as people shop online more. Although Web virus attacks dropped by half last month according to Eldar Tuvey, the CEO of security monitor company ScanSafe, malware infections were up.

"We fully anticipate a jump in malware as consumers go online to start their holiday shopping. As such, we caution users and those responsible for corporate networks not to be lulled into a sense of complacency, but to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves from Web threats," says Tuvey.

The silly season is approaching fast.

Thanks to the Washington Post, The Register, SecurityFocus and BBC News.