PCWorld.com has an amazing slideshow about the disturbing new "shadow economy" that's sprung up online.It used to be that hackers, spammers, and the like were people with low morals or ethics, but high programming skills. Not anymore. Now anyone who's willing to pay a few bucks can spam, scam, and wrek havoc across the web.

For example, for a few hundred bucks anyone can pick up an MPack, a software program designed to let anyone who uses it hijack web browsers and force downloads of malware. It's the first step to becoming a bot herder-someone who sets up a network of infected computers and then rents out their services to spammers. Once they've infected enough systems, their newt botnet can get its own URL from providers overseas who gladly allow malware to be hosted on their servers for just $10 a month. Even more disturbing, for a mere $150 spammers will send out 1 million messages advertising that URL for them. Want to learn more? Check out "How the Web Works: The Malware Marketplace". It'll change the way you think about scammers and spammers.