Out of all the viruses I’ve heard about I’ve never heard of one doing something “interesting.” In other words, rarely are they completely catastrophic or rarely do they put up some splash screen that says, “You’ve got E-Herpes!” I understand that a virus that is too destructive or obvious might burn itself out, but even those that sit idle until a certain date aren’t very interesting. Do virus creators lack creativity or is there a method to their madness?
Well, they seem to be pretty humorless. E-herpes would be funny. I’ve also heard of an email attachment, not exactly a virus, but kind of funny. It was sent to business users. The unlucky ones were those who had their speakers turned up, as the moment they opened the attachment, a goofy voice boomed out “I’M LOOKING AT GAY PORN!” That might turn the boss’s head. 
I don’t know any, but I’d guess that virus creators are driven by the possibility of getting respect from others of their ilk, gained by their viruses obtaining media exposure. The main ways to do this are to make the virus spread quickly, do a lot of damage, and do something destructive in a way that previous viruses had never done.
I’ve noticed that most computer programs don’t have much humor in them. Even amateur programs that don’t try to put off a professional air don’t tend to offer anything funny or interesting, either. And what’s a virus creator? A programmer, only more pissed off.
Still, the possibilities for humor in viruses are potentially endless. Can you imagine a giant office where every single computer started playing Afternoon Delight at the same time? Priceless.
I was wondering about this today. The latest virus, Blaster, is currently taking the world by storm and must be the fastest-spreading virus to date. My home PC was infected within 60 seconds of going online this morning, and it just ripped through the office here in spite of our firewall and up-to-date anti-virus software. Blaster is less than 48 hours old.
Thank God it didn’t do any real damage. If it deleted or otherwise trashed all the .docs, spreadsheets, source code, email, that it could find, it would be an international catastrophe. As it is, it’s just very annoying.
Modern virii, for the most part, concern themselves with the theft of data and therefore deliver their payload and carry out their instructions serruptitiously by design. A virus that appears to be destructive just for the sake of being destructive (like the infamous DoS attackes a year or two ago) usually have some other purpose: to make a political statement, garner media attention as mentioned earlier in the thread, or to specifically impact the financials of the target company (or companies). The good old days of goofy (but not too destructive) virii are pretty much gone.
I remember an old Foxtrot cartoon where Jason’s showing off the new virus that he’s going to post to alt.conspiracies.fbi.gov: at a random date the screen goes black and starts flashing “They are coming”.
The payload of MSBlaster is set to DDoS the Microsoft Windowsupdate servers on the 14th of this month, as I recall.