Hackers don't want to damage computers any more, they want to own them. They've started to run direct attacks where just one business, or even just one computer, is infected.

These can be developed by a 12- year-old hacker.

We live in the world of Internet criminalization, with cartels that develop malicious code to make money. People still don't understand that criminals are in the underground and more are coming.

The motives of hackers are changing. They work for money. The quality of the code is better. In the past, infected systems crashed; now they want hardware to work. There are no global epidemics as there were in the past.

There are no global epidemics like there were in the past. Just local ones.

The 3 February 2006 could turn out to be a very difficult day with unprotected users losing data and the Internet community at large suffering from heavy traffic.