http://apageor2.com/itblog/2009/07/malware-authors-hit-by-recession-too-by-john-e-dunn/
The recession might be having at least one positive effect – it has started cutting the volume of malware.
According to an analysis by German software security company G Data, the number of unique malware signatures dropped by 30 percent between May and June, a fall the company thinks is not a natural lull caused by the holiday season.
G Data’s Ralf Benzmüller interprets the drop to be caused by the same economic forces that have hit legitimate parts of the economy. Criminals have less money to invest in generating malware, which costs money to program, which causes output to drop.
“The black economy operates according to demanding economic criteria: supply and demand define business. The global economic crisis has not left the e-crime economy untouched,” says Benzmüller in an official release.
“Following on from dumping prices for the sending of spam, the downturn has now reached the writers of malware code. Order books for this particular branch of the industry seem currently to be falling back. Therefore we expect a stagnation in new malware figures for the current month.”
It is worth putting the latest figure into context. In June the number of malware samples detected by the company fell to 83,072, down from May’s 123,581, but only a smaller amount down on April’s 93,785.