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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."
...they're pretty proficient in VB.
...US Slashdot editors get tricked once again by the "news media" to post another dupe.
...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.
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.
Why it's so easy for us to accept the typical cracker/hacker defense ("I am just exposing vulnerabilities in this computer system or data encryption scheme") and reject similar defense of a virus writer ("I am just teaching computer users to handle binary attachments with care")?
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
I think I've been here before... I've been told this usually happens because of a glitch in The Slashdot...
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...
"Throw these antisocial delinquents in the slammer for 10 years for each offense."
I believe the average sentence for murder in America is about eight years. Are you really suggesting that writing a virus is a more serious crime than murder?
(Ok, I'd agree, if that virus caused infrastructure damage that killed people... but then they should be jailed for manslaughter, not virus writing)
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.
If you want stiffer punishment, see this story.
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.
Tha Riot Be Tha Rhyme of The Unheard -jediman1138-
As it happens a very appropriate sig to the matter at hand.
I'd point out, however, that the rioter is often expressing a generalized anger, often against the innocent, indeed often against the very supporters of his own cause. It reduces the cause to an act of thuggery in way no different than any other act of violence.
A thoughtful and directly relevant resistence is more fruitful, just and likely to draw further support.
John Brown's taking of the Harper's Ferry Armory is still the stuff of legend. Tim McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah Federal Building is, and shall remain, an act of infamy.
Some virus writers are angry young men with legitimate cause for their anger.
Wiping Grandma's C drive as part of an act of generalized vandalism is a poor way to express that anger and does nothing to actually relieve it's cause. It does not even leave one with an idea what the virus writer percieves that cause as being.
John Brown is considered a terrorist by a good many to this day, but at least we know what the hell he was mad as heaven about.
If one has a distaste, or even an anger, about certain aspects of society or orginizations within that society, well and good. Oppose them. Oppose them with your words, your actions and even your very life if need be, but please, leave my mom and my grandmom out if it unless they are directly involved.
As to the issue of punishing minors as adults, I will accept this only at such time as the legally defined as adults. To deny a person of youth the franchise as a full citizen because he is too young, ignorant and immature, but hold him responsible, without the proper rights and benfits of full citizenship and representation, because he "is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong" is hypocritical, unjust and undemocratic.
This issue came to a head in the 60s when teenagers were being drafted for the Vietnam war, and yet those same teenagers were denied the right to vote on representation or other issues which had obvious life or death consequences to them.
That is why the age of majority was lowered from 21 to 18.
Rights and responsibilites should always, always, always march hand in hand.
KFG
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
Well, VB's clearly a weapon of mass destruction and we should shut down the organisation behind it. ;-)
Take care.
Ken.Lewis
without being a lawyer: I think it is impossible to pin someone for manslauther if he has only written and spread the virus, but not actually ran it himself when it caused the damage. Reckless endangerment at best I would say. anyway, back to the point. In my opinion punishment in itself should never be considered a solution to crime. The fact that you could be jailed for it might even highten the stakes, and with that the kick, for some people. When I was a kid I would love to sneak in the garden of neighbours that would get really pissed if they found out... in fact i always snuk into /their/ garden.
It would be far more effective to make these kids understand that programming a virus is just not cool in the first place. If this approach works against smoking why not against hacking etc?
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
Who's us? I find both of those excuses unconvincing.
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
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 -
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.
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?
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.
"Rights and responsibilites should always, always, always march hand in hand."
Hear! Hear! Why is this simple concept so hard for people to get? Draft, drinking, and voting. The age for these need to match. Any others to add?
Society can look at all of the facts and peg the age where appropriate, but it is not cool to have different ages for these regardless of other reasons.
Let's jaw a bit:
"We need to raise the legal drinking age."
"Why?"
"Well, the incidence of DUI accidents and fatalities is way too high for the 18-2x segment."
"OK, I can give you that. Do these numbers hold for males and females, or just males? If just males, should we raise the age for males only and leave the age for females where it is?"
"Umm, umm, umm. I don't know, but we can't have two ages, one for males and one for females. I mean, how would that look?"
"OK, so we raise the age for drinking to 2x. (By the way, why don't we leave the age for drinking where it is and raise the age for driving to 2x? Just kidding!?) Now our reasoning seems to be that statistics show that people under the age of 2x have proven that they do not have the sense or judgement needed to to decide when they should drive after drinking. Is that about right?"
"Yes, that's about it."
"OK, so we can't trust them to make the decision as to drinking and driving, but we trust them to decide who gets to run the country and everyone else's lives? Does that add up, or should we raise the voting age to 2x while we are at it? Also, should we take the vote from anyone convicted of DUI the way we take it from felons now?"
"What you are saying makes some sense, but the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 on account of the draft and how it was not right to send people to fight and die for their country if they had no say in who was sending them. I don't see how we can raise the voting age without also raising the draft age to match. Perhaps the age of majority to match."
(add some more if you like...)
I think that what virus writers do is to some degree helpful and harmless, the idiots that distribute the viruses are the people that should be drawn-and-quartered. Writing something is not the same as doing something with it. These 'programmers' have every right to produce and publish their programs. But the fact that these programs are destructive is why it's illegal to distribute/release/run them. I have no problem with these folks writing these things and publishing them, it allows me to see what they are up to and at least keep up with them when I can't get ahead of them security wise.
The article paints an interesting contrast between the writers and the 'script kiddies' we all loathe who are the real evil dolts behind most virus and worm activity.
Of course I use a Mac desktop and GNU/Linux servers so until these guys start using something other than VB I am not too terribly worried about them trying to exploit any hidden flaws in my systems, but it is helpful to know what they are up to, same reason I subscribe to 2600.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
That's easy, Bart Simpson with a Windows PC....
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
What's worse is, that under certain circumstances, premeditated murder carries a *maximum* penalty of 2 years in jail (basically for environmental crimes. I studied several cases in detail)
Food for thought.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
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.
I don't necessarily buy either excuse but...
One might view a "benign" virus writer as someone who was writing viruses and NOT releasing them into the wild...and this might be likened to a hacker who finds security problems but does NOT exploit them.
Anyone that releases their virus/worm/trojan is no better than someone who breaks into a system with the intent to do harm.
Why it's so easy for us to accept the typical cracker/hacker defense ("I am just exposing vulnerabilities in this computer system or data encryption scheme")
Who accepts that? Just last year a man (I can not remember the name but the story made slashdot) almost went to jail for reporting a weaskness that could be exploited to a large corporation. e did not even exploit it, simply noticed it. If you think that in this post patriot act world you can hack using the above as an excuse, you are a bit out of touch.
With regards to law? Absolutely. The age of 18 may well be "magic" (which is really to say somewhat arbitrary), but it is real nonetheless. If one does not like that lower the age. If one does not like the idea of lowering the age, that only serves to make my point. Set the age wherever you like, but abide by the age.
I might also point out that this record incriminates not so much the child, but the juvenile detention system. If he commits an armed robbery at 17 and beats an old woman half a year latter while still a juvenile something has gone terribly awry. He should not have been allowed to be in a position where that was possible.
Please note that I never, ever said that juveniles who commit serious crimes should not be treated as such. Merely that they be treated as juveniles who have commited a serious crime.
And if he beats an old woman to death on his 18th birthday, toast the motha' fucka'. You'll get no argument from me that you can't do that on the basis that the day before you wouldn't have been legally allowed to do so.
KFG
I don't think we should punish virus writers at all.
Try to see it this way. If not for virus writers todays systems would be far less secure. In the long run viruses improve the security. Hell, let them expoid every hole they find, so we know about it.
And what is all this fuss about the costs of a virus. If a virus can cost millions than this is not the fault of the writer. In the real world you would not hide millions in a trashcan in front of your house and not expect it to be stolen by someone.
As a subscriber, you got to see the dupe before the rest of us!
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.
There ought not be a draft at all. If the cause is so unpopular you can't get a volunteer militia, you really shouldn't be fighting it at all. Besides, conscripts make terrible warriors.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I believe the average sentence for murder in America is about eight years.
It would have to be a belief, since it's not based in fact.
I couldn't find the actual time served, but Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that the "sentence imposed" was slightly over 20 years. The average time servered is less, due to the death penalty, prison murders and parole. I wonder how the account for Life sentences in this stat. Possibly factored as 40 or 50 years?
Ruger
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
If you pay the entry fee you get to play the game.
Anything else is robbery.
KFG
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