Virus Writers - The Enemy Within

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Virus Writers - The Enemy Within

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday February 22, 2004 @02:49AM from the vandals-and-visigoths dept.

Slob Nerd writes "An interesting read from todays Observer "He's 21, he's got dreadlocks, likes punk bands... and his hobby could wreck your computer in seconds. Clive Thompson infiltrates the secret world of the virus writers who see their work as art - while others fear that it is cyber-terrorism.""

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My Hero by DarkHelmet · 2004-02-22 02:49 · Score: 5, Informative

I think this is the third time this story has been posted.
Googled version to NY Times story
Of course, does it really count if the same story appears on a *different* page? Or a different website.
Maybe it's time that slashdot subscribers get a cached version of the story hosted on slashdot. That way, when an editor is about to submit a duplicate story, it'll check for similar articles cached on the site. That way this kind of thing doesn't keep happening. Hell... Slashdot editors won't even have to read slashdot anymore!
Thank you CmdrTaco for rejecting the story I just submitted in favor of this one. And I *know* the story I submitted wasn't a duplicate, or else my web server would have felt it. ;)
You really are my hero.

--
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
1. Re:My Hero by DarkHelmet · 2004-02-22 02:52 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Oh yeah...
  The slashdot article where this story already appeared is here:
  http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/06/194322 9&mode=nested
  
  --
  /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
2. Re:My Hero by Motherfucking+Shit · 2004-02-22 03:02 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  And just three days after that, it appeared here:
  
  http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/09/024524 8&mode=thread
  
  Which, I imagine, makes this story not a dupe, but a triplicate!
  
  --
  "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
3. Re:My Hero by squiggleslash · 2004-02-22 03:20 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Worst of it is that this in The Observer, a British Sunday newspaper that hasn't had any credibility in the tech community since the infamous "Peddlars of Paedophile Porn" episode back in '97.
  For those who missed it: That paper printed photographs on its front page of the chairman of a large British ISP and the owner of a famous anonymous remailer in Finland that was the target of a campaign by the Scientologists, under the above headline. Their logic? For the former individual: there's paedophile porn on the Internet, so if you're running an ISP you must be selling such pornography. Kind of like the Queen is a child pornographer, after all she was head of the Royal Mail at the time (Britain's post office), and child porn often gets sent by mail...
  The allegation against the anonymous remailer was, in many ways, even worse. The service was free and had been crippled so it couldn't be used to send binaries in any practical way, so in no sense could he have been described as "peddling" that kind of material. The allegation came at a time when the service - used by a variety of groups from abuse victims who wanted to discuss issues anonymously on Usenet to Amnesty International and dissidents who needed privacy - badly needed help as the CoS had various lawsuits against it citing copyright infringement. Attackers of the CoS had used the service to publish, anonymously, various CoS tracts. The service shut down one week after the Observer article was published.
  The Observer ran this campaign for two weeks and finally went silent over it, never issuing an public apology or a retraction. During this time Britain's fledgling Internet community went, to put it mildly, pretty much ape-shit.
  For me it was a bit of an epithany, I suspect it was for many others too, as it demonstrated how low the press can get when they're trying to get readers. This wasn't some third rate tabloid, it was a newspaper famous for its supposed high-minded liberalism and commitment to truth - it was an article in The Observer that lead to the founding of Amnesty International, another that lead to Britain's withdrawl from Suez.
  Do I take seriously an article published in it about virus writers? You bet I don't. I don't think anyone in their right mind can take that newspaper seriously.
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
4. Re:My Hero by saforrest · 2004-02-22 06:56 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Attackers of the CoS had used the service to publish, anonymously, various CoS tracts. The service shut down one week after the Observer article was published.
  
  Well, anon.penet.fi (which is what I assume you're talking about) was shut down willingly by its maintainer shortly after a raid by the Finnish police seized personal information on an anon.penet.fi user who'd posted Scientology data.
... and his homepage ... by bdejong · 2004-02-22 03:23 · Score: 5, Informative

http://www.spth.de.vu/

- bram
Article Was Lifted Directly From NY Times by tealover · 2004-02-22 03:30 · Score: 4, Informative

Here's a link to the first paragraph.

Is this a copyright violation ?

--
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
1. Re:Article Was Lifted Directly From NY Times by 1u3hr · 2004-02-22 04:07 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Is this a copyright violation ?
  No. Since it credits the author it's certainly been paid for. (It'd be far too easy to prove plagiarism if not.) Either the NYT syndicated it or the writer himself, depending on his contract with them.
  Actually most of the interesting articles in the NYT get sundicated. If you want to read one that requires a payment to read (after a few weeks) just use their search function which gives you a paragraph or two and then Google on a likely phrase. You ususally find a copy of it elsewhere.
Re:Dupe, or no dupe... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-22 03:35 · Score: 1, Informative

Will a 372 bytes, self-replicating worm, affecting an, until then, unknown vulnerability on the MS SQL Server do the trick? By the way, this little devil was called "Slammer"
Re:Virus Writers by JeffHeatonDotCom · 2004-02-22 04:04 · Score: 2, Informative

Besides, its not like the "script kiddie" even has to be smart enought to code the virus in the first place. Often just capture one in the wild and modify it a bit to pick on your favorite target. Or for the REALLY weak on programming skills, just use a virus writer like this. (a link to the description, not the actual virus writer) http://www.pestpatrol.com/pestinfo/n/neuroid_word_ macro_virus_generator.asp
The New York Times Magazine by Andrevan · 2004-02-22 05:09 · Score: 3, Informative

The New York Times Magazine a little while ago had a slightly more insightful article which also interviewed the dreadlocked guy and Phil3t0aster and stuff, additionally taking a peek into the culture of virus writers and script kiddies. I don't know if they put their magazine stuff online, but it was a good article.

--
"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss." - Douglas Adams
Au contraire, viruses already affect medical care! by ccmay · 2004-02-22 06:01 · Score: 5, Informative

Virus writers are just lucky computers haven't advanced far enough where medical machines can be remote controlled via the internet.
The PACS system (digital X-ray reading monitors) at the hospital where I work caught Code Red last year, and was down for a day or two. X-rays were being read on printed films just like the old days. Slowed everything down significantly. I don't know that it directly affected any patient's health, but it certainly could have.
-ccm

--
Too much Law; not enough Order.
meaning of [sic] by n3k5 · 2004-02-22 06:53 · Score: 4, Informative

[sic] means "Spelling In Context".
No, it doesn't. 'Sic' is a latin word. I don't speak latin and I'm too lazy to look it up, so I only recall the approximate meaning, which is something alone the lines of 'such', 'thus'. The implied meaning is "yes, what I just wrote indeed was in the original text just like this". So, your explanation of the concept is not bad at all, but your concrete answer is plain wrong.

--
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
1. Re:meaning of [sic] by Xarius · 2004-02-22 07:22 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I stand corrected, I checked on acronymfinder.com and it gave me:
  
  Sic [not an acronym] Latin: thus; so (not a mistake and is to be read as it stands)
  
  I had always assumed it mean that, sorry and thanks for pointing it out to me (nothing worse than being wrong and thinking you're right!) :)
  
  --
  C17H21NO4
Old Article by snookerdoodle · 2004-02-22 07:21 · Score: 2, Informative

While this article is dated today (2/22/04) in the guardian, it appeared at least a couple of other places a couple of weeks earlier:
The Impact Lab Some place called "sofa. rites de passage"
And in the NY Times 2/8/04 ($ required):
The Virus Underground
Mark