Slashdot Mirror
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."
Do virus writers really go to virus conventions? I'd think you'd find people like Ms Gordon, undercover FBI, wannabe 133t teenagers, and maybe a couple former virus writers out of jail and trying to find admiration.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"The stereotype that virus writers are all young teenage boys with no social life, hiding in their basement is not accurate" It is quite normal for teenage boys with no social life(something they have no control over) to hide in their basement. I believe it was Linus Torvalds who said that we could alll breathe easier if all these poor people could just get some dates. (someone will probably redirect this to the NYT magazine interview)
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
For your average email virus, slap on a SMTP engine, a searcher to grab email addresses, and a semi-interesting email so people will run the program, and bam, you're got yourself an email virus, preying upon people's stupidity.
/. lawyers and people who play one: virus writing is illegal, I know, but is writing a trojan illegal? And if it is, how do you define a trojan?
On the other hand, things that attack vulnerabilities such as buffer overruns, etc are harder because you actually have to do some research.
A question for
Stereotype is a word that seems thrown around an awful lot these days, and it's often used in a negative context. But aren't stereotypes a logical and efficient way of group things (in this case people)?
I'm not saying that every stereotype is right all the time, and some are downright wrong, and have been perpetuated, not out of a means of mentally sorting and grouping, but out of hate or fear.
Anyway, I'm gonna go hang out in the backyard of my white Protestant family's backyard and talk about golf while barbecuing.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
Not to push your idea too far, but perhaps virus writing and slashdotting are somewhat related.
No, I'm not trolling...
Virus writers get a lot of attention and feedback regarding their work. They usually believe they are exposing some weakness or highlighting some security risk. They see their actions on the news and the internet.
Slashdot posting gives some similar stimuli. By posting an excellent message, the author receives moderation and more people start discussing the idea. Likewise, most slashdotters are posting to expose an idea or highlight something they think somebody else might appreciate.
Both activities give certain rewards. Just like trolling is a cheap (immoral?) way of getting good slashdot stimuli such as responses and emotion... virus writing is a cheap (immoral?) way of getting "rewarded" for programming.
I think the worship of Rand (Atlas Shrugged) is stupid... however, it serve to remind us that people do certain things for rewards--slashdot or virus writing included.
Davak
Please get over this. I know that there are "white hat" "hackers" out there who want the meaning of hacker to be something different, but you lost that battle a LONG time ago. Ask anyone on the street these days, and they'll tell you a hacker is someone who maliciously breaks into people's computers. You can't change that, just come up with a different name to call yourself or live with the reaction most people will have when you tell them you are a hacker.
Any hacker with sufficient knowledge of how to do this also knows that we live 3 meals from anarchy; if the accounting and shipping systems of a major food chain go down because of your virus and can't be brought back up again, the food won't get delivered. What happens to the inner cities and suburbs? The farms? Other countries?
Kid, critical shit isn't connected to the Internet. It's just not. Web servers don't count as mission critical. I don't think that anybody died because of "Blaster". Hackers are *not* that important.
They all come from varied backround but almost all have 2 things in common; they faced conflict at a young age that they overcame, and that they overcame our school system dumbing down intact enough that they still have a love for learning and playing.
Yeah, you're describing dorks in school that got beat up. Boo-fuckin'-hoo. If you read the article you'd realize that she said that this is NOT the stereotypical virus writer.
Writing viruses is a crucial part of our society, if it weren't for these smaller groups we wouldn't know how insecure everything is and if we didn't know how insecure everything is, we wouldn't be trying to secure it
Insecure from what? Oh yeah, script kiddies telling us how insecure our boxes are. It's a vicious cycle. Security wouldn't be a problem if not for these little spoiled shits with too much time on their hands.
Take Independance Day (Yea, the movie with all those aliens and ships nuking us). Why did we win? Because the aliens had bad computer security, that's why.
That was the most ridiculous movie I've ever seen. That doesn't prove anything. And yes, you are nuts. Fucking nuts if you think that the movie "Independence Day" proves anything.
Oh, so it's wrong for me to figure out what's wrong with a computer and fix it, but it's right for microsoft to lie to millions of people and advertise their OS as secure then bribe judges to be nice to them?
Last I checked, virus writers aren't fixing anything.
Kid, you're delusional. Get a job. Get a life. Get laid.
At the risk of responding to a -1 post...
Maybe it makes us feel good to educate these people, at the same time as we are installing a firewall for them and pointing them to lavasoftusa.com?
Every person posting on this site knows the difference, and for the most part, people that don't aren't likely to matter until you have explained it to them.
Doesn't it make sense to have an immediate reaction test like the word hacker to assess unknown people with?
I for one welcome our new "know the difference" underlords.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Yeah, the usual fakery did show up, in your reply.
Ms. Gordon is not actually logical?
Hired for her looks?
Typical of the "culture of American women"?
One psychologist writes an article (intended for mass consumption, not an academic audience), and you forgo logic to assume all women are illogical.
Let me guess, women make their decisions based on emotions, you buy into the theory that PMS is behind most female crimes, etc.
At least TRY to be logical when attacking someone else for being illogical.
In terms of the actual article, keep her audience in mind. She has a purpose in writing what she did. This was not purely scientific, but a rhetorical performance, with a particular audience: the general public. She therefore catered her use of language (and how much depth she went into regarding her methods and results) to such an audience.
Had this been written for an academic journal of some repute, you'd be reading something very different.
I emailed Sarah godron for a article she wrote entitled Don't let your kids grow up to be hackers. I directed her to numurous url's with that more then explain the difference between a hacker a cracker and a virus wrtie. She basicly told me it was some one else's article. And the media twisted the articles word around. Then she also told me that consumers do not know the difference so they make the article as scary and apealing to the idiotic mind as they can.
/crackers and such, Every single one of them told me They did not write the original article it was the works of some one else basicly just using there name. And every single one of them also told me It's what the people want to here.
But my main point is here, Every single reporter that I have emailed about making false claims about hackers
So don't take these articles for what they are the media twists them and re writes them all to make them apear sexier, And non of the so claimed authors are truely the real author.