Hello, Beach Babes and Buddies.
That's such a cool cake!
Do I get a discount for all day?
Sorry you are still having problems with that

. It seems like people would have better uses for their time than creating viruses/malware/rootkits

I have never heard of a rootkit
Viruses and Spyware make up a multibillion dollar industry, and I don't think that includes the antivirus/antispyware side of it, which is also huge. People are making huge money from Viruses and Spyware these days, or it wouldn't be as prevalent. Viruses started out as nuisance stuff, but when they learned what they could do with them (as programs), they evolved quickly into much worse. Then Adware and such, then Trojans, and then Spyware. Spyware, at its worse, can steal your whole identity and bankrupt you.
A Rootkit is a particularly heinous problem that embeds itself into/under Windows, hides itself and can make itself boot before Windows, then modifies or replaces critical Windows files so it can do what it is designed to do.
Rootkit Many AntiMalware programs don't even look for them, and most of those that do can't handle them (but at least you'd get some indication).
Virus and Spyware activity is always heightened at major events, like Holidays, Elections, Disasters, etc., because they know that more people are online. The Mac isn't really any more secure than a PC (Windows). The only reason that Macs aren't effected as much as PCs are is because they aren't targeted. For every Mac, there are thousands of PCs (hundreds of thousands, to thousands of thousands of PCs), so they make a larger target. If PCs (Windows) ever disappeared, then whatever the most popular Operating System at the time was (Linux, Mac, whatever) would become the target.