I wonder if it has to do with the changing motivations of malware authors. In the pre-internet and early internet days, it was mostly young folks doing it for s

I wonder if it has to do with the changing motivations of malware authors. In the pre-internet and early internet days, it was mostly young folks doing it for shits and giggles, as a power trip. It wasn't targeted; they just wanted it widely distributed to make a big splash, and it often didn't communicate with the creator in any way. Now, malware is a criminal industry. People are making big money off of it. It doesn't make a lot of sense to target individuals when you could go after big, wealthy institutions. Same goes for government malware--they're looking to infiltrate and disrupt rival institutions and industries, not inconvenience private citizens.