I can’t even begin to recall how many times I’ve gotten into this conversation lately: Someone complains about 13-year-olds in their basement writing viruses to get attention, and I counter that we just don’t see that sort of thing anymore. It’s all about the Benjamins, now.

And today, we get this article about a virus which entices people to run it by saying it has a copy of the new Harry Potter book. Obviously the promise is a fake, but what’s notable about this is that it doesn’t try to steal any system information, diddle with your data, or pwn your box - it just makes system changes such that your system becomes largely unusable.

Now, there was a time when that sort of system damage seemed like a Really Bad Thing. It is a significant pain in the rump, until you do fix it. But compared to having to change bank-accounts or fix identity theft issues, it all seems terribly quaint. The changes the virus makes are entirely fixable, and you don’t even have to call your credit card company to do it.

That being said, if people would just not run things like this in the first place and practiced good security hygiene, there would cease to be motivation to write the things that are monetarily motivated. It would be nice to someday wax nostalgic about the Bad Old Days when crimeware ran rampant, as a long distant memory.