At one time viruses, spyware and other malware were mostly written by script-kiddies (mostly pimply-faced male adolesents) as a form of vandalism.
These days are unfortunately long gone.
Today it's all about making money.
For example a website that somehow ''gave'' you an unwanted toolbar, would earn a small commission.
But a simple toolbar is reletively benign. The big money is made in compromising thousands of computers and putting them into a single ''botnet'' These nets of zombie computers contain tremendous computing power and can be used to extort money from legitimate web-sites using a distrubuted denial of service attack.
Much of the spam that clogs our inboxes also is sent from these zombie machines, thousands per hour per machine and the actual owner of the computer is blissfully unaware of the fact. But the attacker and controller of the botnet makes a great living selling his underground e-mail server service on the black market!
Of course, since a fully compromised computer gives the attacker TOTAL control over it, it becomes trival task to mine these computers for bank account numbers, passwords, credit account numbers, identities, social security #s, etc.
And the list goes on and on.
Perhaps Eugene Kaspersky, founder of anti-virus maker Kaspersky Labs said it best, '' It's a different world today. 10 years ago, we were fighting against smart kids who hacked as a hobby. Now, we're dealing with criminal gangs that control your computer to make money. Different world, different protections.''
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