Virus Bulletin 2006, the international virus conference, was held in Montreal this year. Just a few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend many of the presentations, which ranged from topics of targeted trojan attacks, botnets and new methods of botnet coordination, to the growing criminal element behind viruses. It's sometimes shocking to see how much the virus world has changed in the last few years. I'd wager that if there was just one overall theme of the conference, it was about criminals and the new profit motive behind today's malware. Long gone are the days when viruses were made by hackers just for fun. My favorite quote taken from the excellent, low-key conference was during a panel discussion on fighting cyber crime: "If anyone in the audience is a member of organized crime, please raise your hand." There's big money on the criminal side of viruses these days. The past two or three years has seen a dramatic rise in for-profit virus activity at every level, from the people running botnets and making money off spyware to widespread phishing attacks and various trojans that encrypt a user's data and request a ransom.

I'd like to look at the profit motive in some detail, to understand this dangerous new trend. First allow me to lump together the myriad of today's for-profit virus threats into just two camps, for the purpose of this column: those threats that target the Little Guy, like individuals and individual organizations (via targeted trojans, general trojans, rootkits and targeted hacking), and those amalgamated threats that target Big Populations (via botnets, tonnes of spam, and spyware). The virus folks behind both camps seek to steal money, information and identities. But they work in different ways.

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