However, David Emm, senior regional researcher, UK, Global Research and Analysis Team, observed that the motivation of people writing the malware and the people using it has changed.
According to Mr Emm, the motivation is linked to "what that technology allows us to do".
"It's no accident that cybercrime really didn't start to appear until 2003-04," he commented.
"Because really up until that point, we didn't routinely do all the stuff online that involved moving money around - transactions, banking and shopping, and so on. It was really only at that point that it was viable that people were making millions from infecting people's computers."
The first quarter of 2011 saw the largest ever number of unique malware samples, McAfee reported recently.
Posted by Simon Jones
