The world of malware has become professionalized in recent years. Phishing and spoofing aim to get credit card and other potentially valuable personal information more than they intend to simply wreak havoc. The day of the teenage hacker being criminally naughty has been replaced by mature gangs being criminally organized and profitable. Cyberanarchism also remains a part of the wonderful world of malware.

And the newly emerging world of AJAX development looks to be as prone to this trend as traditional sites. Recent reports have found that cyber criminals are following people who are "(turning) to Web applications for everyday tasks like e-mail, friendship and payments...in search of bank account details and other valuable data, security researchers said," according to a recent Associated Press report.

No longer are Microsoft Explorer and Office applications the great sieves for malware developers; recent attacks have focused on Yahoo, Google, and eBay, for example. The concern among security experts is that these sites, as well as popular community-based sites such as MySpace will become the prime targets of leading-edge malware.

Software that loads malicious programs through ostensible photo links are not new, but their presence is increasing.
ne of the latest discoveries, announced earlier this month by FaceTime Security Labs, is a worm attacking Orkut. As a quote in the recent Associated Press story said,  "The bad guys are just stepping up a level and becoming a lot more malicious in what they're trying to do," according to Chris Boyd, a FaceTime security research manager who discovered a worm that attacked users of the Orkut site. "Sadly, it's quite a brilliant idea, and we'll probably see a lot more of it in the months to come."

AJAX developers may find themselves in the middle of this new malicious trend, with their Javascript creations under increasing attack as the new generation of Rich and Web 2.0 era sites are developed and evolve. The only silver lining so far in this new battle is that website owners can quickly patch their sites for all users, rather than having to direct users to download specific patches in the manner in which Microsoft must always react to the latest attacks on its software.