Hi Pezley,
You could also call them "security risks" if you wanted to. It's nice sometimes to give posters some context - for instance, if you know they have spyware on their system, then you could call what they have a privacy risk. It just gives them a bit more insight into what's happening, and people tend to be more calm and so on about things when they feel they know exactly whats happening. But generally, 'malware' does refer to all of these things. as the 'mal' stands for malicious and the 'ware' for software, hence 'malicious software' - therefore any software that was created with or for malicious intent - and that covers pretty much anything except, under very specific (and unlikely) circumstances, keyloggers and some types of 'spyware' - like SynchronEyes.
Mo,
I believe that people make malware for various reasons - those being monetary mostly. for instance, there was once an instance of someone programming an application that allowed them to 'catch' all of the money that banks would truncate - in otherwords, the bank would say that you had transferred, say 12% of a certain amount tht came to 12548.364478, but they would infact say that it was 12548.36 - thus the .004478 had been truncated. the program allowed them to catch this and then place it into their own account - they made millions!
I also believe that another reason is simply to prove they can - as a mental exercise or challenge.
Matt
"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
- Mark Twain
