Mikko Hypponen's Malware Odyssey

CowboyRobot writes "Security expert Mikko Hypponen talks about his experience at F-Secure, including adventures such as flying to Lahore to interview the creators of 'Brain,' one of the early computer viruses that was spread manually on floppy disks. But while the early virus creators were just trying to have fun and learn, modern malware makers are motivated only by money. 'But there's a misconception that they all necessarily make a lot of money. There's a hierarchy of workers, with some just making a few hundred dollars to $1,000 doing the dirty work of the more experienced online criminals who make the real money.'"

Comments

error correction

[brennz]

"Security expert and notorious self-promoter Mikko Hypponen"

"modern malware makers are motivated mainly by money, just as most of the antivirus industry, including F-Secure".

Re:error correction

[Ash Vince]

"Security expert and notorious self-promoter Mikko Hypponen"

"modern malware makers are motivated mainly by money, just as most of the antivirus industry, including F-Secure".

Everyone is motivated by money to a certain extent

The simple reality is that without money you cannot live. You need money to pay for food, housing and everything else you need in this world. You can try and not let money be your primary motivation in all things (for instance I could earn far more if I did a job I did not enjoy as much as being a software developer) but ultimately money always comes into these things as we live in a capitalist society based on money.

My chosen career would probably involve sitting around at home contributing to open source projects all day if I did not need to worry about getting paid. I could just create nice beautiful code that was a pleasure to work on 100% of the time instead of having to sometimes just throw a bunch of crap together as the client needed it yesterday and doing a proper job would take me a week or so.

Stuxnet certainly wasn't about money

[crazyjj]

Some malware these days is militarily and politically motivated too.

Re:Only the goth chicks can save us.

[Tastecicles]

Pauley Perette can save me any time she wants.

don't be so sure

[davidwr]

Spending $BIGBUCKS on Stuxnet may be cheaper than spending $BIGGERBUCKS getting rid of Iranian nuclear ambitions the old fashioned way and certainly cheaper than $EVENBIGGERBUCKS of cleaning up after they drop The Bomb on $ALLY.

Officer Friendly Says:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Remember kids, blue collar crime does not pay; and, honestly, most of the lower rungs of white collar crime are only classified that way so that they can keep you on salary rather than pay overtime and don't pay all that well either."

Well... that sucks for them.

[nighthawk243]

Hacking requires at least 5 monitors to do correctly... That cannot be cheap.

Crime really doesn't pay that well

[Sycraft-fu]

You discover when you look at it that it doesn't escape normal economic rules, in that the lower tier people doing menial work don't make tons of money, they make low wages. Even at the higher end it really doesn't pay that well, comparatively. You look at the drug lords and say "Wow those guys have a lot of money," but realize it is very few of them. then compare them to their legit rivals, the top tier businessmen like Gates, Buffet, Bezos, and so on, and they really don't compare all that well.

Crime ultimately ends up being just another kind of business.

Re:Malware would cease to be profitable

[Macgrrl]

We both know this is about as likely to happen as a dog ceasing to lick their balls. They do it because they can and it seems like a good idea at the time.

Lahore is in Pakistan

[Jawwad]

Since nobody seems to notice, just wanted to mention that Lahore is in Pakistan. The two brothers allegedly did it to protect their program from being pirated. Whats noteworthy is that they even left their names and contact address, so the victim can contact them to clean up if he/she wants. The message that would appear said: "Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Basit * Amjad (pvt) Ltd. BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES 730 NIZAM BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN LAHORE-PAKISTAN PHONE: 430791,443248,280530. Beware of this VIRUS.... Contact us for vaccination..." The two brothers, are still running their own business "Brain Telecommunication Limited" in Pakistan.