Making our lives miserable

Looks like spyware, viruses, and worms just weren't good enough for those pendejos. Now there's a new kind of malware that just sits quietly on your computer, waits for you to go to a bank site, and then steals your password. And they are sneaky.

These specialized forms of spyware, now being called by other names like crimeware, ratware, and even bankware, worm their way onto victims' computers in a number of ways. Some are inserted completely in silence, through an unpublished or unpatched software vulnerability. Others are hidden in Web sites on the Internet's darker side, such as pornography sites. Still others come in e-mail, disguised as electronic greeting cards.

They're called RATs, which stands for "remote access Trojans". And they could get worse.

The next step for RAT programs is continuous screen capture, which would allow a criminal to watch every move a consumer makes online, as if peeking into the room with a video camera. The technology already exists, but it is bandwidth intensive -- a problem that's slowly disappearing as consumers sign up for higher-bandwidth services. ING's system would be easily foiled by continuous screen captures.

Personally, I like the term "crimeware". Aptly labels the actions of such psychotic bastards.