2003 was a quite extraordinary year in the malware world. Three major developments went largely unrecognised:

• the emergence of long-term malware projects, involving multi-stage attacks using spam, worms, trojans, spyware and proxies
  
• a clear switch in motivation - no longer intellectual challenge or simpleminded cyber-vandalism, but financial gain became the primary motive
  
• the emergence of a covert peer-to-peer malware network. As traditional virus-writing groups went deeper underground or disbanded, organised crime, by stealth, undertook a radical redrawing of the malware landscape.