Slashdot Mirror
Virus Writers - The Enemy Within
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.""
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
Virus writers, while technically skilled, are complete dumb butts for using their skills in ways that are harmful to society and businesses, even if it's not their fault that it is easy to do thanks to Microsoft. They'd be better off using their skills for something more productive.
thisnukes4u.net
And the technical side of the article is a pile of shit as well. Virii don't "reprogram parts of your computer". Script kiddies generally don't download virii, but trojan clients.
Think that's code for "From the >/dev/null dept."?
Whenever I disassembled viruses or worms, I had to scream. Even in the good old DOS-times and even with bootsector viruses, where size was an important factor, they were simply horrible written. (i.e. unnecassary bloated)
While some may imply in their posts, that virus writers are technically skilled, I've yet to see a single example of beeing better than the avarage bad programmer...
It's not like I don't have appreciation for the fine arts, but this is taking it too far, it is almost to the extent of patronizing virus writers.
Ok fine, what if someday, a student doing research in microbiology decides, just for the sake or fine arts, I'll release a mutant plague bacteria...
With quotes like this: 'This guy,' he proclaimed, 'is the best at Visual Basic.' I really understand the level of these guys... Show me an 1 k, auto-replicating, ASM-written worm spreading like the lightening through an undocumented hole and I'll be impressed. These are nothing more than wannebe punks.
Umm. Slight absence of any mention of virus writing for profit: there's enough evidence that a number of recent virii were mainly about installing SMTP Relays on infected machines to propogate spam, or leaving a backdoor open so that this could later be done.
4 23258&mode=nested
0 51056136
Or else installing DDOS software aimed at Spamhaus servers, or leaving backdoors open for same.
So. Art: Check. Vandalism: Check. Profit Motive: Check. Insubstantial "infiltration" by journalist: Check.
Ferinstance
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/03/1
- Oops. There goes Spamhaus
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/
- most of this week's crop install backdoors.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040221
- Your IP Addy for sale to a spam-merchant near you...
That's usually the case with any subject! Every movie, documentary, or article that I've seen or read and have had personal experience with has been a load of bunk. I've been interviewed for numerous newspaper and magazine articles and they very rarely use any of my quotes in context. They'll usually intentionally remove the context to twist words to mean whatever agenda they're trying to push.
My personal experiences with the media have basically ruined my ability to enjoy anything anymore. Since I know for a fact that virtually every story I've contributed to has been embellished by the authors to increase its entertainment value, I assume that any story that's been done about a subject I'm not personally familiar with has been tainted as well. And, most of the time, I'm correct. A simple five minute Google or encyclopedic search on the subject gives me more accurate data than the story that I'm following up on.
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
http://www.spth.de.vu/
- bram
Does everything include nothing?
Oh dear, this thread really exposes the state of the Slashdot community: Grand-grandparent can't use adverbs properly, grandparent makes a typo, while correcting someone's grammer and finally the parent:
:-)
I assume it's not a typographical error.
shows that he has little clue about the fact, that typography is about designing thing containg text in such a way, that makes them aesthetically pleasing.
The question now is, of course, what have I screwed up?
1. Cooking*
2. Cars
3. Boats
4. Trains
5. Swords
6. Guns
Just because you do them, doesn't mean you test them out on innocent people. How are these virus writers any different?
*Applies to slashdot readers, only.
Sholdn't be there Karma penalty for posting dup...triplicate article ? Isn't it amount to trolling ?
Let look at a lot of these exploits, they generally are .scr, .vbs, .bat, etc files. By blocking these attachments by default you're going to avoid most attempts at compromising your machine.
.exe to zip it because your mailer doesn't support executable extensions. If you get a bounce back or a message saying "I didnt send you an .exe" then you can safely assume the file is no good and just delete it or set your mailer to auto-delete.
Sure, this is old hat to slashdotters, but I think it would behoove all email client writers to do this by default as MS does now. Now, that leaves us with macro word/excel viruses, other exploits, and the zip files themselves. The first two can be taken care of by a competent virus scanner or system patching and the latter forces the user to open the zip archive thus revealing the true extension (most compression utilities do this) and copies the file(s) to some location thus giving the virus scanner more of a chance to check the thing for viruses.
Its far from a perfect solution, but it will make people sensitive to file extensions and file types. It will also save disk space and bandwidth by compressing attachments (or even the message itself). Added functionality can be added like signed zip archives, AV hooks into zip programs, etc. Heck, the zip format already provides a cross-platform encryption scheme. Sure its not 3DES/RSA or anything, but it sure beats nothing (especially for those worried about sniffing).
This is essentially the setup many of the companies I work with have. You get your pdf, doc, xls, etc but anything executable is either deleted or quarantined. I don't see why email clients written for residential customers can't do the same.
Data loss isn't even an issue, the worst case scenario is asking the guy who sent you that
This can be done in three steps:
1. Implement auto-zipping. Geeks and security sensitive people will probably enable this by default. Or it should be default with newer version of mailers.
2. Once a significant amount of traffic is in the zip format set your mailer to reject all executables. It also could auto-remail the person sending you executables. (this may be exploited by spammers looking for live email addresses).
3. Watch zip vendors work closer with AV vendors to provide better protection from viruses in zip archives.
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.
You really do have an interesting point. If sending a virus to my computer can be called art or intelligence or cleverness, then can kicking in the virus writer's knees be considered art or cleverness? After all, the kicker is just exploiting a the weakness of the kickee, in the same manner that the virus writer is exploiting a weakness of someone else. It would be artistic because it would be sending a message, & it would displaying the human body in a way that isn't usually done. It would certainly get the kickee to think.
testing out my trending skills