Why is it so hard to find the little bastards creating these viruses (or whatever) and shoot them?
It is clear the punishment versus the rewards for this kind of crime is not severe enough.
Infections such as this are good reasons to move to a 64-bit OS if you stay with Windows.
There are few exploits that can be made to work on a 64-bit system with the many extra protections there. Some 32-bit classes of viruses can do some things in a 64-bit system, but they can’t take it over. Also, memory space allocation is randomized and DEP is made effective for all executables so that malware that breaks programs can’t give out access (instead that application simply crashes).
However, all of your 32-bit programs work in an emulated environment and you need special 64-bit versions to truly take advantage of other features.
Everyone should move to a 64-bit OS ASAP.