Fear Thy Name is Conficker

This piece was written for ABC Online and can be found here.

Over the last few weeks you may have read reports of a computer virus named Conficker. It's sophisticated and has infected millions of systems.

What you might not know is you actually funded its development.

The virus writers of old were trying to bring the pigopolist system down, man, but today, it's all business. Viruses make money for their creators by stealing credit card data from infected systems.

This type of fraud is the backbone of the cyber-criminal economy, and because merchants are generally forced to cover the cost of card fraud[1], they've already factored losses into the price you pay for that six-pack of beer or that new plasma screen telly. You're funding this crap, and it's the banks' fault.