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The Psychology of Virus Writers
securitas writes "BBC Technology reports on the psychology of virus writers and the work of security researcher Sarah Gordon, who has been studying this area for 20 years. ''The stereotype that virus writers are all young teenage boys with no social life, hiding in their basement is not accurate,' she said. In contrast, she said, most virus creators are typical for their age, are on good terms with friends and family and are often contributors to their local community.' The story is an interesting contrast to a previous BBC report about why people write viruses."
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Using the term hacker is not vague to the general public. The word has a very concrete meaning, to most people it means someone who does bad things with computers, i.e. use them to steal data, crack systems, mess up corporate and governmental websites, and such.
/.ers use the term to mean ubergeeks with a more egalitarian ethical system, but joe public does not understand this. They we either not around when the word hacker was used as a benevelant tag, nor are they as deep in the geek community and mystique.
Sure, geeks and
So the use of the word geek does not make the article loose validity.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Did someone think she is attractive? Did someone at Symantec hire her in a flight of fantasy?
Have you seen a picture of her? Maybe attractive if I put on my beer goggles. She probably didn't get her job just on looks and while not be a programmer the media seems to think she's a computer security expert. Disclaimer: I only know what little I've read about her. Personally, I think you're right about the article. It makes a lot of weeping statements and generalizations without facts to back them up.
That's a really weird outlook. You sound like somebody who wears his necktie too tight or something.
Writing self-replicating code that 'lives' in cyberspace is 'cool.' It's completely uncool when it is used in malevolent ways and/or damages anything.
The hacker 'ethic' demands that nothing be damaged, it's more like climbing a mountain 'because it is there.'
Oh the other hand, most of the 'modern' viruses are neither interesting nor technically oriented. Hell, I remember peeking into 'virus writing newsletters' half a decade ago, and even then it was almost entirely people distributing debug shell scripts to generate virus binaries. There was very little of the commented ASM source code that would be technically interesting.
There are a few thoughtful and interesting places to find info about and study computer viruses. Chase down a copy of 'A Pathology of Computer Viruses' by David Ferbrache, Springer-Verlag, 1992. If you can find one. (I notice Amazon has one used copy available for $240.)
A Good Intro to NetBS
I don't call them "viri", either. I call them "virii", which is the accepted slang pluralization of the proper English "viruses" in the virii community.
Shows how much you know.