Author Makes Symbian Virus Code Available

putko writes "The NY Times (registration required) has a story about a Brazilian software expert whose posted the code for his Bluetooth virus on his website. The article has a general anti-free-exchange-of-information tone to it. Security firms call him bad. Nokia is concerned. Here's his homepage (in Portuguese), so let's not unnecessarily DDoS him: The most irritating bit of all this is that the guy writes the thing, distributes it, gives it a name (eponymous) and then the stupid virus firms go and butcher it -- e.g. "Lasco.A". What's so wrong with "Velasco" already? The guy clearly wants it to be named after himself."

Comments

Malware routinely gets renamed

[babbage]

The most irritating bit of all this is that the guy writes the thing, distributes it, gives it a name (eponymous) and then the stupid virus firms go and butcher it -- e.g. "Lasco.A". What's so wrong with "Velasco" already? The guy clearly wants it to be named after himself."

It's not much of a leap to assert that most malware is, on some level, a form of ego tripping, and most malware authors, much like the authors of any other software, would like to see their work spread far and wide.

Hence, antivirus companies always change the name.

Whether or not a virus had a name to begin with, each vendor will select a name of their own for it to deprive the author of that fame. Why encourage them, you know?

But there's the other bit of ego -- each vendor will select a name of their own. For a prominent attack, one of these names will make it into he wider media, and being the vendor that named it is itself an ego boost for that company.

So, all of this naming nonsense is just a stupid dickwaving ego contest. We'd almost be better off if we did like the National Weather Service and named each year's outbreaks in advance, before any of them are spotted in the wild, just to neutralize the stupid games that go on over what this junk gets called. Not that that'll ever happen, of course...