Who makes computer viruses and why?

[Dancing David]

Why do you suppose this particular malware shows a screen that says buy virus protection? It's not a direct link to a seller, but why this screen with this malware?

It is a direct link to the people who are using the malware to get your credit card number.

 

[Dancing David]

Does natural selection affect these computer viruses?

Are we ever going to have face the prospect of evolved computer malware? Bots cooperating and clustering together to more efficiently target their unsuspecting prey?

Evolution by design, you have the maker of the OS and programs, you have the people designing exploiting malware, you have the people who respond to the people who design the malware, and so it goes...

It is why some things like Combofix, the actual way it works is not discussed, and then you also have 'honey pots' and the like.

But it is all human design at this point.

 

[Resume]

They are made to make one feel guilty for surfing iffy porn. By who I leave up to the reader.

 

[Dancing David]

Porn is only one route to infection "FREE MOVIES" is another, there are many.

 

[lomiller]

Some are just vandalism, others are made to create bots that can be used to attack companies/web sites for any number of reasons. IMO the ones you are most likely to see today are made for profit. These do things like harvest personal information that can be sold to advertisers or used for identity theft, try to sell you stuff, or spawn pop-up/redirect your browsing/searches to web sites paying them for the traffic.

The toughest types of malware to prevent tend to be when an otherwise trustworthy site is hacked so it injects Trojans to people who visit, or infected banner adds that site owners don’t control.

While anti-virus is important a good firewall that requires applications to have permission before allowing them to connect to the internet is more valuable because it won’t allow a Trojan to send personal information back out.