Just another online security wrinkle
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39291463,00.htm?r=1
More scary information about how Spam- and bot-nets are being used to make money, and how it's evolving into a fairly unstoppable money-generating profit-enterprise.
On one hand, it's impressive the way unscrupulous hackers (and the profiteers taking advantage of their services) are forging ahead with a profitable business model despite all the industry's attempts to stop them, but mainly it is unsettling in the extreme that the internet on the whole has basically zero mechanisms in place to stop this kind of cybercrime.
It does not bode well for the future of the internet, when organised crime is profitable - it will only attract more criminals wanting to get a bite of the tempting fruit of ill-gotten money from computer hacking.
Hell, hackers have been growing (in numbers, and effectiveness) for decades, and that's with their hobby not providing any income - just for their own education/amusement.
You throw the carrot of actually making a LIVING off your black-hat hacking activities, while living a renegade online life and "sticking it to the man"?
I can easily see a significant minority of disaffected tech-savvy youth going this direction and making it messy.