I don’t know about you, but hearing about major virus spreads have really stopped over the past year or two. Their used to be news every six months of a new virus spreading fast, and making waves even on traditional media, like newspapers or television.

USAToday have also noticed this shift, and done an article on it. It seems malicious program writers are trying to control the spread of their programs so they are smaller, and thus less likely to be noticed.

In the past, virus writers seeking fame and attention wrote their malicious programs to spread as quickly and broadly as possible, boasting to colleagues when they manage to cripple hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide in a matter of hours.

But now, many writers are driven by money instead. They write code to turn the computers of unsuspecting individuals into “botnets” — networks for spreading junk e-mail or stealing financial data from others.

Security experts find that some are even taking measures to make sure their programs don’t spread too quickly or too broadly, lest they get detected and blocked.

“If they are able to stay active longer, they make more money,” said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering with the security response team at Symantec, a software vendor that issued its twice-annual state-of-security report Monday.

A very interesting shift in the way the internet and such programs, viruses, and whatnot are all being used.