Fame, Or Monetary Gain?
Another way to distinguish a virus from spyware is by its objectives, or more accurately, the objectives of the malware writer. Many viruses are written by malcreants who want to distinguish themselves among their underground peers and simultaneously thumb their noses at anti-virus vendors and network administrators. Viruses are written to outperform previous virus outbreaks, and to illustrate how the far the “science” of virus programming has advanced. Recent events such as the war between the authors of the Netsky, Bagle and MyDoom viruses certainly support the argument that at least some virus activities are a testosterone thing. Spyware wants to sap a host (your computer) of anything it can use for monetary gain, for as long as it can remain attached to the host. Spyware is content to sit on a single computer, to monitor what the user does, as is the case with tracking adware; or influence where the user visits, as is the case with targeting advertisers who use browser helper objec
