The Bagle worm outbreak last week could mark the beginning of a long, hard year swatting at computer viruses as the growing popularity of broadband boosts infection rates.

More internet bandwidth for homes and businesses through more broadband connections will enable viruses to spread faster. And spammers can use infected computers to deliver more junk mail to more inboxes.
Increased bandwidth also means old problems will be harder to deal with. "We are likely to see an acceleration of the impact of some of the threats we have seen over the last couple of years," Symantec managing director John Donovan said.

Rather than directly attack an infected system, for example deleting data, hackers now aimed at "opening up the security processes on a system so they can be remotely exploited", he said.

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