I was reading an interview with an ex-malware programmer who formerly worked for an organization called Direct Revenue. The company allegedly installed adware on millions of computers, and hired our protagonist after being impressed by his work on--check it out--spam filtering software.

The programmers and techies among us will definitely enjoy reading about the various programming techniques and obfuscation that were employed to ensure the persistence of the adware.

What proved to be really interesting though, has to do with the idea of gradualism. While the malware programmer did not deny responsibility for what was done, he did marvel at how he was eventually coerced to do something he would not have done if asked outright on day one.

That led me to think: Is that how cybercriminals, malware programmers and other online fraudsters in general, start off? Do share your thoughts on this with us in the comments section.

In other news, some pictures of the latest version of Microsoft Office have been leaked onto the web. Its called Office 14--looks like Microsoft decided "13" isn't such a nice number to have--and the interface looks even more polished with this iteration. Of course, one can always hope that the beefier resources that Office 2007 required over Office 2003 will not be repeated here. - Paul