Slashdot Mirror
The World of Virus Writers
No_Weak_Heart writes "Looking for a little weekend reading? You might try the cover story from this week's NY Times Magazine. It's titled The Virus Underground, and it takes a look at the world of malware scripters, virus writers and worm designers."
Some one should write a virus that will allow us to read NY Times without a suscribtion.
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
"The Virus Underground" sounds like a bad nightclub.
Du-uh -- everyone knows worms live underground !
We questioned them why they decided to write malicious software. "I don't know," one of them responded, "the best reason I have is that it actually got me laid once or twice."
Like a lot of virus writers, this guy is a bored teenager ... 50 years ago he would have been out vandalising his school. In somewhere between 20 and 50 years he'll have access to nanotechnology.
Format C: ? Overwrite every file? How about rebuild your washing machine so it suddenly appreciates the taste of "cat" and has the capability of acting out it's amorous feelings for your central heating.
(Philet0ast3r is an online handle; he didn't want me to use his name.)
Really? I mean I could have sworn that Philet0ast3r was a real name. Are you sure he isn't the son of the l33t3st parents in Europe: C4ptainKaos and S3xyH3xy?
John.
I would also recommend the title by the same author, "The Troll Underground", which highlights the life of the Slashdot troll
Someone infected my computer with a virus that deleted any file that I updated in the last twenty-four hours.
Slashdot? Nope, haven't heard of it. 3000 hits in the last week? The virus did it.
my theory that the most dangerous people are people who are bored.
Yes, how else could the Slashdot effect be so devastating, if not for millions of bored nerds looking for something to click on?
Then it asks me what I'd like the virus to do. Shall the Trojan Horse format drive C:? Yes, I click. Shall the Trojan Horse overwrite every file? Yes. It asks me if I'd like to have the virus activate the next time the computer is restarted, and I say yes again.
Umm, once you answer yes to the first question, are the rest not redundant?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I hear finding the right one could be worth up to $500,000 now...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
This kid would make a great poster boy for birth control.
Best Buy can have you arrested
while we thought that the IBM commercials were cool my non-geek friends just said "what the fuck was that?"
They aren't into 2001: and they certainly aren't into watching someone watch TV while a near braindead boxer says 5 words. Perhaps if they used Rupert or one of the whores from the Bachelorette to promote Linux they would have had their attention.
"''This is a revenge worm,'' he explained -- for ''not hiring me, and hiring some loser that is not even half the programmer I am.''"
Perhaps someone should tell him that personality counts.
G
thanx. i just changed the password. bye.
Jane, virii is not
The plural form of virus
You ignorant slut
from the article: I've never contemplated writing a virus before. Even if I had, I wouldn't have known how to do it. But thanks to a teenager in Austria, it took me less than a minute to master the art.
Now obviously, if he's a master of the art of computer viruses, there's a reason he chose to overwrite every file after formatting drive C:, right?
That guys just a lamer. All the major viruses released of late do nothing but spam or ddos evil coporations. What happened to the good ole day's when they really did format your hard drive? On a serious note, I doubt "underground" groups like this are responsible for today's major viruses. I would point the finger at dirty spammers for 99% of profilic recent virii.
--Gentoo Baby!
Why is "Second Part to Hell" naked in the picture in the article?
A tall blond friend in a jacket festooned with anti-Nike logos put his arm around Philet0ast3r and beamed.
''This guy,'' he proclaimed, ''is the best at Visual Basic.''
That's the first time the New York Times made beer come out of my nose!
Looking for a little weekend reading?
Why waste my weekend, when I can get paid to read it now?
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
Until someone loses some real big money because of a virus or trojan.
Yeah, yeah, there are "estimated" costs of every virus that comes out. And they're not small potatoes.
But just wait until a virus comes out that silently infects machines, travels slowly enough to be barely noticed and only does one thing: randomly change values in an Excel spreadsheet. Or randomly delete one column from a randomly picked sheet.
It'll be Armageddon: dogs and cats living together, Detroit winning the World Series AND the Super Bowl, etc.
--
Mando
Everybody knows apples don't get viruses, they get worms!
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
Maybe Mario is just pissed because he has to live in the mountains of Austria without a shirt.
SIGFAULT
If you make the biological systems analogy, you will also have to acknowledge that a diverse operating system ecosystem is critical to the health and well being of things, especially as the Internet becomes more widely available. We need Linux, IRIX, Solaris, Windows, OS X and embedded OS's to maintain the health of things.
What we really need is for Linux, IRIX, Solaris, Windows, OS X, and embedded OS's to start fornicating with each other like crazy, "go forth and multiply", and let the best children survive, while leaving the weak to die. So, open up all your ports, send massive amounts of data between the systems, and fire your sysadmins.
A tall blond friend in a jacket festooned with anti-Nike logos put his arm around Philet0ast3r and beamed.
''This guy,'' he proclaimed, ''is the best at Visual Basic.''
I.... am speechless.
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
Dude. Why don't you just scream out "Sum1 plz h4x0r m3!!!1!" if you want that kind of attention? ;)
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
I'm all for a virus that seeks out and destroys grammar-bitches' computers.