Yes, a software problem. Nearly all the home user complaints I hear are "my 1 year old computer is SOOOO slow!". And I often see computer shops offering to "speed up your system" and do virus removal.

Install three different strengths of spyware. One that starts in the startup registry key (easy to find), one that is latched onto IE and has a cleverly named executable, and one that exists only as a DLL and latches on to WINLOGON.EXE (rootkit style).

See if they get all three. See what they do to find them, how long it takes, what tools they use. Of course, software monitoring tools to gather these data may be found. Maybe a hardware key logger somehow inside the case?

Hm, does anyone make a hardware screen logger?! Somehow fork off the video card into a buffer, maybe 1 frame per second (CCTV style)? Wouldn't be convenient for badguys to install on target machines, but good for parents, libraries, etc with good physical security for monitoring purposes. Hm........


And Dan, how did the reporters know to ask you, if I may be so curious?

Maybe contract the Storm worm and tell them that your router lights are constantly blinking and your Internet is slow (since your machine is blasting out spam).