Slashdot Mirror
Profile of the Mind of a Virus Writer
zdburke writes "Clive Thompson, writing for the NY Times, has profiled several young computer virus writers around the world. A young Austrian wrote a Batch Trojan Generator which has simple options for constructing your next virus: fomat drive C? Overwrite every file? It's very well written by an author who clearly knows his stuff."
1. His best friend was female(Mary Magdalen) 2. He hung around with 12 men 3. He was really interested in sailors 4. He got impaled by 2 Roman soldiers 5. He cried "My God, my God" when it happened 6. Pontius Pilate ordered him to be nailed on a cross 7. He wore robes 8. He had long hair 9. He kissed Judas Iscariot 10. He never got married or had sex with a woman Jesus=blatant homosexual "suffer unto me the little children" Jesus=predatory gay paedophile
Yeah, once again!
- DT
First post !
Doesn't sound like it.
dupe DUPE dupe DUPE dupe
...they're pretty proficient in VB.
duplicate. nothing to see here. move along
Shit better not happen!
...US Slashdot editors get tricked once again by the "news media" to post another dupe.
I think it's about time we come up with steeper penalties for people who release viruses and trojans. And screw the under-18-you-get-off-easy nonsense. Throw these antisocial delinquents in the slammer for 10 years for each offense.
This was posted like 3 days ago. Unfortunately the Search feature is gone from the front page so I can't find it.
I remember all the jokes about how the guy looked and his lack of clothing...uh...as well as all the many insightful and informative comments, of course.
...by the DUPE virus!!!
Or do the pictures of these guys remind you of the Calvin Cline ads awhile back that bordered on kiddie porn? These kids look like they are wearing makeup and exude a bit of homo-erotic teasing.
It just gave me the creeps, knowing that this is an article for nerds.
The trojans profile you!
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
On the down side this is a duplicate article, on the plus side this version has a link to the Google partner version of the article. (So no login required).
I guess this means that I can't gain karma by posting a mirror. Do you think I'm in with a chance of anything else? ;)
But it says right there... "Please write the online editor at daddypants@slashdot.org for any corrections.".
I decide to write that it was a dupe. Sure enough, the thing gets posted anyway.
I mean, that's partly what subscribers are for. And that's also why subscribers can't do comments early. Right?
It's silly. Not only should the editors actually read slashdot, they should more importantly look at email from subscribers saying "It's a dupe!" before posting the thing.
But maybe it's just me thinking in a perfect world. Forget it.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
This has been around for something like 12 years, IIRC, Nowhere Man of that funny group of happy guys at [NuKE] wrote the VCL (Virus Creation Lab) in 92 (maybe 93?). Basically it was a text based GUI app with windows and drop downs that let you design a virus and produced a working one ready for distribution.
Today's viruses are absolutely pathetic compared to some of the older stuff.
--- I do not moderate.
Once again that naked boy... I had enough...
It should be The Matrix failure or slashdot's dupe...
Oh wait...
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
these kids are sad, what a waste....if they can code so well, and are soooo knowledgable why don't they do somthing constructive with their time. I mean come on, yea I made this virus generator and give it away on my website, but look it has a warning...this is for educational use, you really shouldn't spread these viruses. I am sure noone would make a virus with this and spread it around.
A Smith & Wesson beats four aces -- Murphy's Law of Poker
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
The story dupes you!
"And that solves the mystery of the missing ring" - Bender
IF THERE IS another DUPE this week I WILL PERSONALLY kill the editors. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
A Virus maker wizerd for n00bs OMG What next slashdot 2.0 news for n00bs stuff that matters
Cool Linux
A Linux News Site
Downstairs, his mother is cleaning up after dinner. She isn't thrilled these days, either. But what bothers her isn't Mario's poster. It's his hobby. When Mario is bored -- and out here in the countryside, surrounded by soaring snowcapped mountains and little else, he's bored a lot -- he likes to sit at his laptop and create computer viruses and worms.
Maybe this is just crazy talk, but couldn't this woman just take his computer away from him? She knows that he's upstairs doing illegal stuff...he's 16, take away his laptop. "Oh, well little Billy's just upstairs making pipe-bombs...I'll leave him alone."
Parents are there to be...parents.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
#include using namespace std; int main () { char yorn; cout > yorn; strupr(yorn); if (yorn == "Y") system( "mke2fs /dev/hdc");
cout > yorn;
strupr(yorn);
if (yorn == "Y")
system( "for file in `ls -R /`; do dd if=/dev/urandom of=$file bs=1MB count=1; done");
return 0;
}
So, I'm reading this using Firefox 0.8 (browser formerly know as Firebird and Phoenix) which was released a couple hours ago. Right next to it (on my screen) is Thunderbird 0.5, released a touch before Firefox. Yet, the story I'm commenting on is few days old - but it's news to the Slashdot editors.
Again.
I think I've been here before... I've been told this usually happens because of a glitch in The Slashdot...
It's another duplicate for christ's sake.
oh, wow... he wrote a VBS generator... how 1337... It's not even a real trojan; it just deletes files (at least it seem so from the article).
:)
When I was 17, there wren't any trojans that would come with source code. At that time, NetBus was pretty popular, so I wrote my own client-server trojan using Delphi. Since I was the ony person who had access to it, it was completely immune to antivirus software and that meant lots & lots of fun with school computers.
Ah, good old times...
Aspiring young hackers?! Aspiring young hackers don't cut and paste other people's code.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
...that sometimes your story gets rejected in favour of a dupe...
...and then there were the countless dupes announcing the duped story...
eTrade SUCKS
Our virus detector has just been triggered by a message you sent:-
To: editor@slashdot.org
Subject: Profile of the Mind of a Virus Writer
Date: Mon Feb 9 6:00:55 2004
Any infected parts of the message have not been delivered.This message is simply to warn you that your computer system may have a virus present and should be checked. The virus detector said this about the message:
Report: message.zip contains Worm.MyDupe.Slashdot
God is imaginary
It has pictures, name and locations.
Now the sysadmins have someone to beat up and the legal department can take some potshots at them for paying damages caused by virusses.
Hate me!
This one is a dupe, yet again. Christ, man, use the fucking search feature or hand over the moderator status to someone who will. And yes, you are definitely the worst one when it comes to duplicating stories.
Imagine what its going to be like in 5 years when there aren't any more programming jobs in the US. I bet there will be hundreds of new viruses weekly.
Get the parents of these kids to start coding malware.
Parent: "Hey Vorogon32! That was a super neat idea to include multithreading in your latest worm! Awesome!"
Kid: "Awww Mom!"
This article is about as ill-informed as that BBC article that was posted last week. From the article:
MyDoom's ultimate target was an obscure software company named SCO. Champions of the open Net have portrayed SCO as the Antichrist since it sued to establish part-ownership of a popular and free computer operating system called Linux. Linux has become an icon of the so-called open-source movement, which is seeking to limit the influence of companies like SCO and the industry giant, Microsoft, which closely guard their software.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Is looking like a freak a requirement a requirement for a "malware" coder?
I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines.
http://www.spth.de.vu/
"Stephen Mathieson, Detroit. The 16-year-old virus writer is dismissive of hackers who release other people's viruses: "The kids just cut and paste.""
So, we have a 16 year old virus writer accusing other hackers of being childish. Doesn't that seem just a tad ironic?
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
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.''
wow... so not only are these guys so anti-fashion that it makes my brain bleed, they're also awesome at VB.
Truly, these men are the kings of our era....I am humbled by their very existence.
others too feel that the header should be either "Profile of a Virus Writer" or "The mind of a Virus Writer"?
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
TIMMY!
Michelangelo was a master. A spray-can toting kid is just a vandal. These aren't "masters" either, no matter how much they label themselves as such. Want to show off your elite skills, kids? Want to show how much better than Microsoft you are? Write a self-replicating program that patches holes instead of exploiting them.
Nope. They're vandals posing as artists.
Been using sigs for 20 years. Nothing funny left to say.
Well if you ask me:
;)
/. -- You don't need to read the article.
:) -
Well I'm used to using tools which take care of that for you so sometimes I don't think about it. Besides, it's safer to copy and paste........
This is
Actually, what we need is a virus that, in the email headers, adds: X-Idiot-Who-Sent-This: (and variations thereof) to all the emails it sends. Fake the From: address, sure. But I'd like to know who the person is that I should LART for the 100,000 copies of MyDoom that I keep getting. Especially to addresses that I've given out or never even used.
Du-uh -- everyone knows worms live underground !
"The Virus Underground" sounds like a bad nightclub.
Well he _is_ listening to Iron Maiden.
"it takes a look at the world of malware scripters, virus writers and worm designers." I guess my initial reaction was fsck 'em. Fsck 'em all. However, it could be suggested that they have made corporations and governments aware of many intrinsic insecurities in certain popular operating systems which may have prevented some larger potential catastrophe. The problem for these guys, is that we will never know and they will continue to be reviled and hated as losers. (That is unless they are talented enough to score a job with Symantec, the NSA or some other organization dealing with comp. security.)
That may be a side effect in very few cases, but for the most part I think it's safe to say there is no redeeming factor to any virus or its author.
That sounds a lot like Bill Gates argument on why Windows is the most secure operating system available. Not that I agree with Bill about windows, but you make a pretty good point. I don't see how something can be very secure without some real-world testing. Now if I could just get my coworkers to stop opening up every attatchment in their inboxes.
It's true that virus writers are malevalent and don't have pure intentions when hacking their scripts and all, but in a general sense, where would our security be without virus writers?
If you consider computer security like the human immune system, then perhaps it may be seen that these people (while malicious) allow security to keep up with that hacks that can be done. If you kept a person in a bubble for twenty years and then promptly released him into the dirty, disease-ridden world he'd likely get sick and potentially die pretty quickly, as his body has no capacity to survive the world. However, with immunizations (i.e. intentional delivery of malicious agents in small doses, possibly on some schedule) and just general exposure to the germs in the world, most people have no problem surviving this world. Yes, MyDoom, and Trojans, and all the other viruses are more than nuisances and they cost people time, money, data, and other things, but these are in relatively small doses. If we had been in a bubble free of viruses for all this time, then whenever we're released into the "real world", anybody could take advantage of all these exploits (open sockets, DDoS, back doors, etc.) at once and perhaps bring the whole infrastructure down. It's the fact that virus writers are always developing viruses and releasing them that allows us to fix these problems individually, on a manageable time-scale. If they wanted to do some damage, maybe they should withhold all their viruses and unleash them all at once to cripple everything so much more.
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.
Like really virulent biological virii, computer virii that work this way will limit the extent to which they can spread......unless of course.......they work out slightly more sophisticated methods of damage, or they delay the damage for a period of time before "expressing" themselves.
Ahh, so easy with a dupe
USPTO: Doesn't know how to use a search engine to find prior art
Slashdot: Doesn't know how to use the search engine to look for dupes
how long until
You have just received the Amish computer virus. Because we don't have any computers, or programming experience, this virus works on the honor system.
Please delete all the files from your hard drive and hand-deliver this virus to everyone on your mailing list. Thank you for your cooperation.
Call me cynical but I think this story is a well-constructed lie.
First, the accurate but uncheckable details: name of some guy in Austria, his 15-year old girlfriend.
Secondly, as has been remarked, the photos. They are just too well shot, and I can't for a second believe that a virus author would sit still while the makeup girls did their thing, lighting got the shadows right... no frigging way!
Thirdly, the technical details are obviously wrong. Formatting hard drives? Deleting files? That is so 1980's. Today's virus writers are obsessed with the social interface: how to confuse people into clicking the attachment.
Forthly, the timing. A long, detailed investigation into youthful virus writers just as the worst ever virus hits the Internet, with no mention of mafia connections, of zombie spam engines, of "sorry, andy, but this was just my job",...? WTF?
Conclusion: it's a set-up. These young dudes don't exist as described, the shots are of actors, and the story was invented behind a desk. Someone wants to create a convincing enemy for new legislation which will paint uncontrolled hacker youthdom as the enemy of all that is right and proper. Long prison sentences for simply creating the wrong kind of software ("because it could be released and do harm"). Rapid implementation across the globe ("cause these guys are in, like, Austra!").
Now, allow me to get really cynical and ask this question: why is no-one bothering with profiles of the organized criminals behind most of the damage done to people's computers? Could it be because misdirecting the blame at youth hackerdom means the problem will not be solved, and so the hand of oppressive government can become stronger and stronger...
Of course, I could be wrong, and really viruses like mydoom could just be the work of guys like this.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The article is great, but anyone who thinks that VB is a great language for anything has some work to do... I know it can be made to do anything, I coded in it back in high school, but writing virus' in it? I'd rather code in assembly using a terminal for the blind...
Ah well, I guess I don't get it, not being a virus writer and all...
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
> Now the sysadmins have someone to beat up and the legal department can take some potshots at them for paying damages caused by virusses.
I know Slashdot is a haven for bad spellers, but how could you possibly get three s's in "virii"?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, VB's clearly a weapon of mass destruction and we should shut down the organisation behind it. ;-)
Take care.
Ken.Lewis
Yes, they go into the popularity of VB among virus writers in the article.
Come on! Get it together /.! You guys had this article on Friday! Don't you read your own site?
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
is this a no fly zone? or does it break up airplanes too?
On the creator of the Sobig.F virus...
''The F.B.I. is out for the Sobig guy with both
claws, and they want to make an example
of him,'' David Perry.
Women don't write viruses?
Women don't read slashdot?
I feel so pigeonholed!!
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
Indeed. One can say that slashdot has been infected by a polymorphic, duplicate comment virus. It even changes paragraph sizes!
In fact, this virus includes signatures from several other slashdot viruses, also known as "posts", in order to evade easy detection.
Note the +4, karma-whoring yet randomly worded subject line. With practice, you should be able to use this to spot similar viruses in the future.
Philet0ast3r's party was crammed with 20 friends who were blasting the punk band Deftones, playing cards, smoking furiously and arguing about politics.
this writer may know his computers, but he sure doesnt know his music genres.
And its not really causing damage that can't be reversed, it is just slowing down the computer a lot :-))
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Regarding emacs, the joke is usually, "it is a lisp intruputer with a text editor build in."
In this form, regarding Outlook/MAPI, "it is a mobile intellegent architecture with a mail transport."
I have reported several stories as dups. Never got any direct answer, but they disappeared from /. within a minute. If it helps any, I have always included the original URL in my email.
Maybe you reported it as a dup just before it went live, and then it was too late. If only a few people bother to tell daddypants, odds are that once in a while they will be too late. Suppose only one out of a hundred is a dup, maybe that is reasonable odds. Also, if I see one hundred red new articles, and report the occasional dup, which gets yanked, but once in a while I am too late or ignored, I would remember that fuckup more than the successful ones.
Infuriate left and right
Just sit back and laugh. Journalists can't cover this stuff. It's a joke.
Now, think about how off-center computer-related articles are. Anything that deals with technology.
Have you ever had first-hand experience with a story your local paper covered? And while reading the story, you think to yourself, "Where the hell did they get their (mis)information??"
Apply that to EVERY story in the news. Scary, isn't it?
Incase you decide to lookup his screename on Google or such. His page attempts to install a trojan on your machine using javascript. Just a heads up.
What are these peoples motives? To find out tune into slashdot.
How can you criticize Microsoft for this? There have been only 60 extremely serious vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer in two years.
The real source of the problem is..., well yes, Microsoft. One would think that Microsoft would be better at coding than someone who taught himself programming and writes programs on the weekends.
Visual Basic is a computer language popular among malware authors for its simplicity; Philet0ast3r has used it to create several of the two dozen viruses he's written.
Jeez...VB? Real virus hax0rz work in assembly, it's smaller, neater, and faster. These guys are a bunch of script kiddie punks. No wonder they were hip to being interviewed, they had no talent and wanted a name for themselves.
Perhaps we should kill them.
'This guy,' he proclaimed, 'is the best at Visual Basic.'
No more comments. Now this people call themselves hackers. I prefer the term Windows (windoze, winsux) hackers.
Hardcore hackers have been around for a long time and most of them are unknown to the authorities. I've known guys who hacked into phone and cellular networks. I've also known guys who get copies to software before they are released and crack it. Non of them will ever let a photographer take a picture. The thing is, Microsoft and so called security experts are fooling themselves. The best hackers are very intuitive and don't wait for a researcher to publish an exploit. In many cases, they knew the exploit before the researcher stumbled across it. If Microsoft really understood hackers, they would really be shitting bricks.
That's easy, Bart Simpson with a Windows PC....
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
...of a virus writer. I want to punch the nose of a virus writer.
We are still sending people into battle to kill for Bush's cause that are not old enough / responsible enough to own a gun for their own personal defense. 21 is the age for that, too.
Another good feature would be to include the code for the generator itself with each copy of the generated viruses that would intermittently pop up a dialog box saying: "The virus you have been infected with needs to evolve, please answer a few questions to help it spawn."
The best virus would use genetic programming to write it's own code. The beasties would 'mate' with other infected programs and use the vast computing power of the infected masses to select for mutations that could spread in new and unexpected ways to stay ahead of the antivirus makers. The mechanism for breeding itself would have to be subject to evolutionary change or it would be vulnerable to erradication by virus checkers though.
Eat at Joe's.
Something that very many of you seem to be missing is the fact that the world needs hackers. While I don't condone the release of a virus (that is actually executing it in the wild) I think that it's absolutely necessary for them to exist. The guys who do this sort of coding set the standards for the industry. If nobody ever pointed out the flaws in microsoft's code, then it would never be fixed. If you all are going to sit here and point fingers at people who write exploits, I'd hope you stop and think first about the contributions that hackers have made to the infosec industry. RainForestPuppy, K2, Solar Designer, and these kinds of people are there on some middle ground doing things that we need to have done. These kids writing exploit code for the windows flaws are just doing their part. While there is a fine ethical line that need not be crossed when writing viruses (that line being somewhere around the 'releasing them into the wild' step) the flaws and exploits serve a very real purpose that people (whiners) need to acknowledge. A good example of hackers for the benefit of society: the honeynet project. Just because it can be dangerous to flirt with the dark side of computing, doesn't mean we ought not to ever go there. The virus writers and code exploiters do very similar things that our so-called 'real world' medical doctors do -- after all, wouldn't it be really easy for genetic engineers to design a killer bacterium that could wipe out half of the planet? Do you contend that we cease all research in the field because it could possibly be put to some malicious use? That's like saying that we shouldn't work on AI becuase you may end up with 'the Matrix,' and come on, that's really immature.
Speak for yourself.
What a winner...
Vorgon is still angry about life. His next worm, he wrote, will try to specifically target the people who wouldn't hire him. It will have a ''spidering'' engine that crawls Web-page links, trying to find likely e-mail addresses for human-resource managers, ''like careers@microsoft.com, for example.'' Then it will send them a fake resume infected with the worm. (He hasn't yet decided on a payload, and he hasn't ruled out a destructive one.) ''This is a revenge worm,'' he explained -- for ''not hiring me, and hiring some loser that is not even half the programmer I am.''
That's a good point, who knows there might be something in VB that says if this code has this line and this line in it add this to the executable.
Makes you wonder how AV SW scan files so fast.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
As a subscriber, you got to see the dupe before the rest of us!
Technically, ''viruses'' and ''worms'' are slightly different things...
[A virus is] a tiny program, and when you click on it, it will reprogram parts of your computer to do something new, like display a message. A virus cannot kick-start itself; a human needs to be fooled into clicking on it.
Thank you /. editors, for letting me know the article is "very well written by an author who clearly knows his stuff." [sic doxamatum]
I don't see what all the fuss is about. Most of these guys are just pranksters. I see some people here frothing at the mouth about how these guys should be locked into the slammer for months, even years. What a vicious and repellant sentiment. Ironically it seems to mirror the sad, mean outlook on life that drives the virus writers: I will make them pay for my misery!
Clearly some pranks are off-bounds. When the prank goes from mischief to outright malice, swift and appropriate punishment needs to be meted out. Viruses that spy on you, or turn your computer into a spam factory, or purposely destroy data, are completely unacceptable. But for the rest? Rule number one remains that people shouldn't open attachments that they don't trust. As responsible adults, we should know better.
Er, got to admit, I couldn't be bothered to read the article, as I suspect it is pretty much the same story as always, but I was struck by this quote:
...'
'out here in the countryside, surrounded by soaring snowcapped mountains and little else, he's bored a lot -
I must say, if I had the privilege of living in snow and mountains I would be far too busy to be bored - I'd be out there, skiing and generally enjoying nature.
I think you've got the focus in the wrong place.
Finding and fixing security holes is the responsibility of the OS creators - you can say "oh, if nobody hacked into your OS here then how would we fix the security holes? The responsible OSs have people working on them that would STILL look for security holes, would STILL fix them, even if there wasn't a threat.
If a cracker wants to do good things, crack into a box and then tell the company in charge how you did it. Just being a cracker makes you no boon to the tech industry, just as being a virus writer makes you nothing but a nuisance.
In summary: If you are truly concerned about program security, go write code to make it more secure.
These are hacks.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
once again in attempt to appease minority crowds slashdot employs subliminal ebonics. Yvan Eht Nioj.
Because one is something they've probably done in their past, while the other affects them negatively (I've had viruses I have no idea how I got).
In other words--yes, Slashdotters are selfish. If it annoys them, it's bad. If it's convenient, nice, and fun, it's good.
It's also why MP3 piracy is suddenly a "good thing."
First, that sort of thing is in numerous articles.. so it's a useless starting point.
Second, the photos aren't very good. It's easier to tell if you look at the pictures in the NYTimes magazine. One's blurry and grainy, another is heavily dodged (darkened) everywhere except where that "Benny" guy is, and the detroit kid does seem to have on makeup, but the picture is just slow shutter with soft focus and a light flare.
Third, when I read the article.. it talked about how formatting hard drives was old and boring. The writers were interested in odd, creative payloads like flashing images or stupid messages. The guy who wrote the virus generator added the "format harddrive" option to his program.. but that's the main mention of modern hdd formatting. To quote the article: "the prevalence of hard-drive-destroying viruses has steadily declined to almost zero."
Fourth, it is explicitly stated in the article that the main fear is from for-profit or organized virus writing (spammers, mafia, terrorists). It goes on to mention how Sobig is being tested and, so far, has been released six separate times with a built in expiration. They can't profile organized criminals because they don't want to be profiled or found.
anyway, so what's the deal? why troll get food from mods?
p
In American, the Patriot Act hacks you!
Am I going crazy or was this already posted like a week ago.
Like images and messages,
like the very first virus ever,
like brain?
I mean, c'mon... hardly creative. Now, if I was a budding virus writer, I'd be doing something a lot more fun with my code. Hey, you're a 16-year old genius boy kid somewhere who can run circles around every anti-virus software out there... you going to stop with a pretty picture and some messages?
Shit, no! At the very least, set-up some distributed porn downloading streams.
First off, why is the mom knowingly letting her son commit a crime?
Second, why, after so many years of discovery and prosecution, aren't we upping the ante and making hacking and viri criminal penalties far more severe.
And third, why the heck haven't they banned *nix yet at home? The root of the lions share of writting kits and the better viruses have been proven time and again to source or originate out of the fringe elements of the *nix community. It's terroristic in tactic, surely the government can do something on those grounds and inter both the developers and users?
Rights and responsibilites should always, always, always march hand in hand.
In the light of above statement, what is your take on immigrants (H1s or whatever) that still pay Social Security tax although they are not themselves qualified for the benefits (i.e. lose your job, go back).females=give humans life programmers=give applications life They wanna let the world know that they can give life. It is the ultimate homoerotic fantasy...
I'm not sure which is better, the blatant glorification of virus writers or the persecution of wanting to learn how viruses work, or maybe the fact they manage to accomplish both in the same breath. I'm not exactly sure what this article is trying to accomplish. It keeps saying bad virus writer, bad! But at the same time it will use language that shows respect to the individuals in question.
At least it does a decent job at educating the general public, but do they realize they're promoting and justifying virus writing?
Your idea is sound and innovative. The restraint for its implementation is this: how many viruses can you make that bring their own recompiler? Self-modifying code isn't simple to write, specially when you must use Windows API's. Also, script kiddies are really far from working with assembly code, let alone knowing how to reassemble it every generation to avoid detection.
At first I thought I'd post something on how these viruses could only thrive in a society where compilers came on every computer, like MacOS, Unix and Linux. But then realized I was thinking too hard, oblivious to previous knowledge of these evolving viruses. I forget what term has been coined to refer to them, but they do exist. It's just not going to produce simple code. But, I believe you're very right, now that I'm finishing this post. It's just though to write code in VB that will imbue the resulting code to parse and reassemble the EXE file --not impossible. If an inspired hacker can publish code, then thousands of script kiddies will use them. I just don't know why it's less common in the most destructive worms
Is it me, or does it sound like he's got plenty of outdoors-fun potential? Hiking, camping, skiing, etc. Maybe if mom had booted him out the door more often to go and play...
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
out of its @$$ will be the "plague of biblical proportions" the author describes. And maybe not even because of Microsoft but in spite of them, as everyone ELSE wakes up to how bad it really is. Consider: "When the damage occurs, as it inevitably does, the original authors just shrug. We may have created the monster, they'll say, but we didn't set it loose. This dodge infuriates security professionals and the police, who say it is legally precise but morally corrupt." Now isn't that just precisely what Microsoft says about their crappy software? Hey man, we just release the sh!tty code with all the holes, but we don't *force* anyone to go exploit them; the user should protect himself; &c... Congratulations to AOL, M$, and all those who've worked *so* hard over the last 20+ years to make sure the average person is convinced that computers and technology is something only an elite few can operate correctly - an elite few you'll have to pay extensively to make it all work for you, not incidentally. The ongoing policy of the Stupid Scared Consumer as applied to the Internet is now DDoSing you in the ass.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
...and what makes you think virus-writing isn't educational and constructive!? teaches M$ and their uses a lot of lessons, and I personally subscribe to the "open security" methodology, as opposed to "security through obscurity"; you sound like a terrible conformist
GrimRC
for forgetting which &$#?!! site im on and leaving HTML formatted, which was a terrible, terrible lie. My poor paragraphs....
That which does not kill us makes us... st
Personally, I see no reason to patrol the Internet for viruses. The only way to stem the tide of viruses is to give those virus writers somewhere to use their talents is the Mitnick method: give them a job! </RANT>
$DEITY bless $NATION
I hope they send these hackers to jail. They should never be allowed to touch a computer again and they should lose any professional certifications they have if they are members of profesional societies like lawyers or doctors. Once someone breaks the trust, they should not be allowed in any position of power ever again. They broke the rules, so they should have to pay.
I have been fighting for stiffer penalties for some time now. I have written letters to, and spoken on the phone to members of congress that represent my district. I have called and written lettes to state leaders too, hoping they will also make state laws tougher. It is going to happen soon. Every year or two, they stiffen the laws a little more as politicians learn the danger that hackers pose. Hackers will cause the next 9/11. We have to get rid of them now.
Right now, in my state, the worst you could do to a hacker who does not do real damage is take away their computer, fine them 10 grand, and put them under house arrest for a year with one of those ankle bracelets that tracks them. That is a cakewalk. We need to punish them with real jail time of over 10 years. And if the hacker lives at home, then the parents know what they are doing and they should go to jail too. Why in hell should the victim have to prove damages for a hacker to go to jail. For the one victim in the court who testifies, there are thousands who do not.
I have called the local district attorneys office to ask when there will be any hacker trials. I often go to these trials and write letters to the court asking they get the toughest sentances. I encourage the courts to nail these evil people.
These hackers are evil. I hope they have nothing but suffering in their lives.
All your visual basic loving script kiddies are belong to us.
Before you damn the parents of the Columbine psycho killer kids who knew their kids had guns, don't forget the hundereds of thousands or maybe millions of parents that let their minor kids own guns. Don't forget that it is LEGAL for a 16 year old kid to go hunting UNACCOMPANIED by an adult. Don't forget that the VAST majority of these kids never hurt a soul and are perfectly competant to shoot only deer and not people.
Just because something goes boom doesn't make it any more dangerous than many other activities that are also potentially deadly. What is the moral difference between letting a kid interested in possibly becoming a pyrotechnician when they grow up learn to make firecrackers and allowing your 14 year old girl to climb El Capitan? Both activites carry a probability that any mistakes will be rewarded with death or serious injury.
Eat at Joe's.
The author of the article seems to have no idea what he is writing about. And the interviewed "virus writer" is as much a hacker as a kindergartener is an Olympic runner. They will both tell you that they excel at what they do, but neither really has a clue.
/y" Then I send it to all my loser friends and tell them to "click the attachment for my badass screensaver!"
;) That was fun. Unfortunately, it also ate all the CPU (VB, is it any wonder?). That is not what I would consider skill.
"malware", "trojans", "worms" and "viruses" are NOT the same thing! Hell, I could "write a trojan" in 10 seconds: just create a PIF linked to "deltree c:
Neither trojans nor malware is capable of propegation. (BTW, malware is a form of trojan) Viruses and worms are. (worms being a form of virus) I would hope that anyone intellegent enough to write a malicious virus would be intellegent enough to keep his mouth shut!
Oh, and non-malicious "trojans"? I wrote one a while back in VB (yes, VB! the language blows, but it happened to be handy and I wasn't going for complexity, reliability, or speed) I installed it on a friend's laptop. It very slowly changed the windows colors (border, desktop, titlebar, etc.) from their default colors into a hideous pink-and-green scheme.
So, in short, the NYT is trying to tailor a story to fit public opinion and fear, while neglecting to do any serious research into the subject.
With journalism like this, who needs fiction?
-CyberVenom
Its just the sort of thing the open-source communty _would_ do.
People doing news-editing because they want to, and releasing the results to the world for no cost.
I bet some people would pay money to be allowed to submit a patch to Microsoft fixed some of the various outlook (express) flaws.
I would.
Even though it wouldn't do me any direct good (don't use windows), it would save me a lot of bother from friends who [dw]ont use linux, and would be a good deed for the internet as a whole. (Yes, I was a Cub Scout, how did you guess?)
Dan
Okay, how about a prison sentence like Mitnick's, and teaching them to make license plates while they're serving their time?
As far as intent not being equivalent to guilt: you can be prosecuted for dealing drugs merely by being in possession of enough to distribute.
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Now it's my right to write viruses?!?
Can I also build pipe bombs for "educational purposes"?
or are they all children with dreads and peircings. Or really good looking like Angelina Jolie in Hackers.
The last time it was posted, there was nothing to indicate any of the contents of the article, so everyone was commenting based on the title and, for the truly intrepid, the article's first page (of 10). This time, they posted it in such a way that you might actually be interested in reading the article! ;-)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
"It's called a Batch Trojan Generator [for Microsoft Windows(tm)]"
"For 12 months, digital [Microsoft Windows(tm)] infections swarmed across the Internet with the intensity of a biblical plague"
"the Slammer worm infected nearly 75,000 [Microsoft Windows(tm)] servers in 10 minutes"
"the Blaster worm struck, spreading by exploiting a flaw in Windows "
"a worm called Sobig.F exploded with even more force, spreading via [Microsoft Outlook(tm)] e-mail that it generated by stealing addresses from victims' computers"
"When the Mydoom.A [Microsoft Outlook(tm)] e-mail virus struck in late January"
This is far from balanced journalism, what about virus writers and 'kiddies from other platforms?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
What you say?
Hey if you know any one that can do that tell him/her i would like to hire him/her.
Yaa its simple to say program would/should do this that bla bla.... And get moded "Interesting"!
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
These people simply have an immature idea of what's cool.
Even though these people make me sick, they're simply a nuisance to be tolerated when considering the industry/jobs their activity supports.
m.mmm..myyy
Sorry, your analogy to Columbine doesn't hold up.
Giving guns to minors is a crime in and of itself. A Person under 18 may not own a rifle and a person under 21 may not own a handgun or shotgun, in the US, some states are more restrictive. If I were to give a gun to a person, so long as my action was in compliance with all local laws, it is no different than giving them cash for them to buy a gun. So your analogy to Columbine is inaccurate and simply FUDish.
I hope they catch and punish those that release these viruses into the wild, but I believe the writers are protected under free speech. I think your desire for vengance is a little far reaching. What if these writers included a GPL or other OSS network library for part of its functionality, should the writer of that Library somehow be held accountable for the abuse of their work? Of course not! Viruses have legitimate research value and serve to show that an otherwise 'theoretical' exploit is indeed real.
Also I think your use of the term 'hacker' to describe these 'crackers' is a bit indicative of your vindictive attitude in this matter. Your attitude and tone betray an ignorance of the whole issue. This is about free speech, code is speech, and should be protected just like the destructive things newspapers and other media have exposed in their use of free speech. That's why source code is copyright in the same class as literary works.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Hey, im pretty sure this guy works with the Big Bad Bionic Boy right ?, yeah, the guy who hacked JUKT Semiconductor... you remember :)
Most
I used to work in a grocery store and I can truthfully say that there is NO end to human stupidity. Why is it that people who will return milk if the seal is broken or beef if there is a slight threat of mad cow disease are also the same people who will blindly click an email attachment?
We teach our children not to take candy from strangers, so how is this any different?
To do what?
Eat at Joe's.
Back in the olden days, there was at least one DOS-based virus that was released in two parts, which had to meet up and "mate" to release the payload. Anyone remember anything more about it? (This was probably 10-12 years ago.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"mutations that could spread in new and unexpected ways to stay"
Its so easy to say! (actula write =)
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
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I smelled a Rodent Of Unusual Size the first time I read this story, it doesn't get better the second time around. Come to think of it, it didn't smell any better when someone did basically the same story 21 years ago in Montreal and took a handful of disaffected haxor/ph34k kids and blew them up into the sinister hacker group "Top 40". The fact that the group didn't exist didn't stop one reporter from trying to enroll every computer enthusiast in Montreal in the group.
Bah!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.