Why do people make viruses and malware?

There are many reasons why people make virus/malware. Ill start with viruses.
Viruses are made to prove something such as a hole in Microsoft, a recongnition of the programmers skills "I was responsible for the...", to harvest sensitive information (passwords, ccard numbers and such) or to take over PCs to become part of a "botnet" which can be used for things like attacking webservers to bring them down.

As for malware, its usually made for financial purposes. With Adware you get ads popping up on your computer, they want you to click it and/or buy whatever is being advertised and the Malware maker gets a commission for it. It might be X amount per click, might be a percentage of the product cost.

Spyware is typically used to gain market information. For example, lets say you installed a Music downloading program to get MP3s and it has spyware in it. The spyware will keep track of what type of songs you download and what type of bands, send it back to base and now they have information like who is the most popular band and what genre is becoming more popular so a record company can sign more of that genre.
 
Well said. Don't forget the 35 year old virgin living in his mommy's basment that does these things so he can feel powerful and in control cause he can hack some 11 year old girls webcam. The adrenaline junky that gets a rush by doing something illegal.
 
and also I heard developers of anti-virus themselves create virus so that their product will be patronized since they have the cure as well........
 
"lol, Norton seems to be the default 'bad guy' for the technicians here"

Oh lets not leave out sony. Too bad the don't have an antivirus program, they could put a rootkit in it.
 
cos companys do so they can sell you anti virus things most hackers just go in and look and maybe leave a tag
 
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