Other than to say “I can and did”, what other motive, logic or reason would a computer virus programmer have for building, let alone releasing this modern wrench in the technological cogs? Most criminals, kidnappers or pranksters either want or demand money, the goods or revenge as their reward.
My brother suggested that computer mfgrs are funding these people to keep the pc market humming.
What kind of talent are these people harboring that could possibly make them a bunch of money if given the opportunity?
Maybe they were denied a job in this field because of the lack of credentials or degrees and this is a payback.
I saw several post where people want harsh penalties for these virus makers. Yeah I agree with that IF they release the virus’, otherwise maybe they need a job to use up some their destructive free time. It’s almost as bad a arson and cost a lot of people in more ways than one.
You’re probably familiar with graffiti, and can more or less understand the motivations of those who produce it (though you presumably don’t share these).
Now suppose you told these graffiti artists about a new kind of “self-replicating” graffiti. You spray paint it on one building and it magically appears on buildings across the city. Across the country! Do you suppose they’d be inetersted?
Your brother’s a fool. It’s quite the opposite. The PC market has been faltering in recent years; one of the problems often cited is that new buyers have heard so many scary stories about viruses, fradulent email scams, internet porn, etc. that they are hesitating to buying computers. The PC manufacturers would love to have this problem go away.
There have been some stories that anti-virus software makers have been exaggerating the problem, by counting as ‘threats’ viruses that have never been seen in the wild. That might possibly be true.
Very little talent, generally. Most of them now are called ‘script kiddies’ – they just use common scripts to create copycat viruses. No great talent required.
Not likely. Many people in this field were hired on the basis of their demonstrated talents, with no specific “credentials” at all. If you can do the work, nobody cares how you learned it. Besides, most of them are teenage boys, too young to be hired anyway.
If I were a graffiti artist I coouldn’t wait to get my hands on such a magic way to distribute the products of my “talent” in quantity if not quality.
Psychologists have terms for such people whether they have an infantile desire to be noticed or are antisocial or some other anti social personality defect.
I posed a similar query sometime back. If you’re interested in the responses I received you can check out that thread. I’m still interested in hearing more ideas on it because their reasoning has escaped me so far.
I’d hardly compare graffiti artist to this cyber-crime. I see hundreds of tagged rail-cars almost daily. Just about every town has some graffiti somewhere, but graffiti never created the havoc and paranoia that virus’ do. PC’s and communication industry are vital arteries of the world. Paint isn’t going to fix my computer.
I’m willing to bet the farm that most pc users are clueless about how to even begin building a virus, let alone copy one. I don’t even want one near me if I can avoid it.
So Tbonham, If you can do the work, nobody cares how you learned it. Why should these same people even care about their ages - as long as they can do the work… fill out the proper documents and try to hire them.
You’re the fool Tbone - haven’t you ever heard of Supply & Demand. Opec. Microsoft. Gov’t subsidies? price fixing? Insider trading? The auto industry will happily sell you a new car when you old one breaks down beyond repair. Why should the pc industry be exempt from this suspicion?
There may never be a concrete answer to this question since there has never been a shortage of people willing to kill, steal, maim, and create havoc if for nothing more than their own sick satisfaction.
I’m with t-bonham 100% tcdaniel. Graffiti doesn’t create extended problems because the media doesn’t allow for it. The analogy doesn’t extend that far, fine. But the mentality of messing up something just 'cause you can is the same.
I can’t understand the rest of your reply though. Are you suggesting there’s a big insider conspiracy to virus production? 'cause there ain’t.
Virtually all virii ever created have been poorly programmed and work in very substandard ways. Only recently has organized crime been implicated in creating some reasonably sophisticated coded-to-order virii. IIRC, the last one was a worm that installed functions the creator could later use to help spamming operations.
"This website is hosting a blacklist for open relays. How the hell am I supposed to clog up people’s mailbox with spam?
"I’ve got it! I’ll write a virus that does two things. First it will turn infected computers into zombie open relays… this will make it much easier for myself and brethren to send spam… after all, what good is a blacklist if it blacklists every network out there? Second, it will install a trojan denial of service bot. That way, one I have my minion of zombie boxed, I can start packeting those blacklist websites out of existence.
“Then I will be free to send spam!”
Even though basically the only part of this business model that isn’t illegal is the spamming itself. Curiously, the FBI hasn’t been very interested in these crimes, despite the websites being attacked having fairly good records.
I think it’s more of a power trip than anything. (And I don’t know the first thing about creating a virus.) But if you can create something, and release it, and see proof that it showed up somewhere, see it show up on the CBS Evening News… what a power trip!
I hear that there are programs/scripts out there that will create a virus with just a few clicks. Nothing sophisticated enough to take down a well-defended system, but one that will do enough damage so the “skirpt kiddies” can get their jollies.
(But hey, what do I know? My computer doesn’t use any antivirus or firewall software, and I’ve never gotten a virus anyway… )
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