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."

Comments

Re:virus-con

[Omestes]

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.

Sure, geeks and /.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.

So the use of the word geek does not make the article loose validity.