CIO.com has an excellent article about the Cybercriminal Ecosystem. It examines the evolution of crimeware and how malware creation groups follow the organization of legit groups. Here is an excerpt:

It began a year or so ago with a shift in the very nature and principles of malware creation to that of being economically driven. We can see that there are several stages within this evolution that have contributed to the present day situation: A shift from curiosity to profit gain.

Malware creation becomes more organized towards one goal: financial gain through illicit means.

Malware authors begin to follow common trends in business and commerce in order to take advantage of their victims (i.e. iPhones, etc).

The first ever cyber-crime for sale is available through various Russian hacking forums.

Malware authors change tactics to saturating security labs with an ever increasing pace of new malware in hopes to create a sustained denial of service against resources

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