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Virus Author Motives Changing
Tragamor writes "BBC News is reporting that, with the suspected authors behind the zotob virus recently arrested, they are giving insights into the motivation of modern hackers. With the availability of virus sourcecode, authors are spreading to countries which had previously no history of virus origins." From the article: "What the pair were probably taken aback by was the response that the worm generated. Few virus writers now want to hit the front pages, said Mr Hypponen, most prefer to have their creations sneak under the radar, rack up a few thousand unwitting victims who are then milked for money or saleable data. It appears that Mr Essebar was intending to make money several different ways from the people caught out by the Mytob and Zotob viruses he is alleged to have created. "
Sure as there's imagination there'll be more tactics to come.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The governments of the world went after the hobbyist virus writers and marginalized them.
Now you have the malicious crowd filling that vacuum.
Rather than fixing insecure software and educating the public, they chose the heavy handed route.
Quite frankly most virus writers in the nineties had no intent to steal or destroy data.
Seems like everytime a "war" is declared on a concept, it fails.
I mean: with OSes being so vulnerable now and then, why won't any virus writer release hell on every Windows (l)user?
;-)). But are not there psychos outther? Or terrorists? Or whatever lives on Bush's delusional mind as a generic and computer literate 'evil doer'?
Why won't a big impact virus just destroy thousands of files, trash hard disks, or some other destructive action?
Some people here argue that people write viruses (or virii) for profit, for fun or just because they have too much free time (and no sexual partner
See The Register's story.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The Mutation engine it was called. It was big for a virus in its time. And there was Joshi from India, which asked the user to type "happy birthday Joshi", and the Cookie virus which asked you to type "Cookie" in order to proceed. The raindrop virus which made characters fall like raindrops on the screen, the Friday the 13th virus that attacked on (as you guessed) Friday the 13th, and many more. That was the golden period of virus writing it seems, as people came up with innovative ways of hacking the systems, instead of "breaking in" like these days.
I know what you mean - signature based detection is always after the fact. However, it is possible to identify viruses using generic rules and a combination of these and signature detection creates a filter that is very strong and protects against known and future viruses. For example, see this: http://www.impsec.org/email-tools/procmail-securit y.html
Oh well, what the hell...
Very interesting, that the author sees that modern-day computer viruses are perhaps less virulent, while they do whatever it is they were designed to do.
Reminds me of syphilus -- when first discoverd in Europe, syphilus was a virulent disease that ravaged the body, killing victims off relatively quickly. Natural selection dictated that syphilus strains that avoided early detection were more successful at passing along their DNA to new hosts. Virulent, crippling strains died off. [1]
Today, syphilus is rarely fatal, the symptoms are often just a little annoying for a long time. Plenty of time for new partners to be infected.
Computer virues are very similar -- viruses that avoid detection and quietly do their work of replication, transfer, and whatever else they are designed for, end up surviving. Emergency patches don't happen unless the virus (or worm, whatever) disrupts enough computers.
[1] Evolution? I'd say so...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai