What is the point of malware/viruses?

[Jragon]

@DrDeth

Yep. All those dudes you know that say “I don’t bother with anti-virus protection”:rolleyes: and “I leave my computer on all the time” have their computers hijacked, sending out scads of stuff to the other idiots. Then they will wake up one day and find their bank accounts drained, their CC maxed out, and their identities stolen. Then they will blame someone else. :mad:

Hey, anti-virus software makes your computer slow in the CPU!

Damnit, even if it is a bad thing, it’s hard to make people without anti-virus software sound like anti-vaxxers when the strawman has a point.

[Upsurd]

Some people also enjoy showing off how smart they are because they can do damage to your computer.

[Mama_Zappa]

@Maastricht

I had this paranoid image in my head, where one section of MaCafee writes anti-spam software to sell to household PC’s, while another batch of paid employess sit in the darkened basement crancking out viruses that are annoying and visible enough for the customer to sigh and head to the store to buy MaCafee protective software.

Why would McAfee pay people to do that when there are hackers who’ll do it for them for free? :D.

[Maastricht]

@Mama_Zappa

Why would McAfee pay people to do that when there are hackers who’ll do it for them for free? :D.

It is not THAT farfetched. The point of many viruses nowadays it to keep hidden and use your PC as a botnet. So your PC may be a little slow at times, but that is not a reason to run protective software. No, for most people a virus needs to really announce itself in order for them to start buying and running protective software. You’d practically need a virus that makes a pop-up of a skull-and bones saying in a cartoony voice: Ha ha, I infected your computer, haha.

[Noelq]

@DHMO

This.

I have found that this explains a lot about human behavior.

At work, we’ve come to expect a huge influx of spyware/viruses immediately following summer break and winter break at school. The bored little kiddies go write evil viruses on their time off.

[TimeWinder]

Why do people vandalize and bully? It’s just the digital form. (Or was. As others have observed, these days it’s big-time crime).

[Chronos]

Another case nobody’s mentioned yet: Back when I was an undergrad, there was an extremely pervasive virus whose payload consisted entirely of looking for an EXE file whose size was a certain exact number of bytes, and deleting it. The best guess was that some software company had laid off or otherwise angered a programmer, and he wanted to get even by sabotaging their product.

[drachillix]

@Noelq

At work, we’ve come to expect a huge influx of spyware/viruses immediately following summer break and winter break at school. The bored little kiddies go write evil viruses on their time off.

Huh, most of the virus load is done by professional programmers working for botnet herders and such. Its not random kiddies kicking nortons ass.

[Quartz]

Don’t forget international espionage and electronic warfare.

[Fear_Itself]

The black hat industry has been upscale for years now. Those seeking to break into the malware business don’t even have to write code, they just buy a malware kit and load it on a server:

This week, security software provider M86 Security unveiled its latest study (PDF format) of these so-called do-it-yourself exploit kits. To no one’s surprise, it’s a booming growth industry with more than a dozen new kits making their way onto the market in just the past six years.

“After acquiring an exploit kit, the chief goal of the cybercriminal is to make money, and there are numerous ways this may be achieved,” M86 researchers said in the report.

Exploit kits with names like Fiesta, Siberia and Fragus are really just Web applications developed with Web technologies, such as PHP and MySQL, that are designed to take advantage of known exploits in popular applications like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Adobe Systems’ Acrobat, Reader and Flash applications.

Those inclined to pay between a couple hundred bucks to as much as $1,000 then install the kits on a Web server, often based in Russia, Eastern Europe or China, that is connected to a database used for logging and reporting activity.