In the 'good old days' most viruses fell into the category of cyber-vandalism, written by inexperienced programmers as a form of anti-social self-expression. Much of the code they produced was of poor quality, although there were, of course, notable exceptions.

Things have changed, sadly for the worse. The connectivity offered by the internet has provided fertile ground for would-be virus authors, allowing them to share ideas and code with more experienced virus writers. At the same time, the web has become the life-blood of commerce, with growing numbers of enterprises reliant on it for doing business.

By David Emm at vnunet.

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