Why do people thing viruses are cool?

Viruses are anything but "cool." It amazes me how many young people think that viruses are amazing or awesome to write. A virus totally wiped out my hard drive and I had to re-install all of my source (lost most of it), my OS, and all of my games, projects, databases, financial accounts, etc.

Destructive code is not amazing, nor awesome. If people cannot find anything better to do than write destructive code then get out of programming - we don't need you. You are not proving anything to anyone, other than the fact that you can misuse and abuse a very worthwhile piece of electronic circuitry.

I don't care how much you know about code, I still would not want you in my company because you just simply cannot be trusted and are irresponsible to boot.

(No, I'm not a grouch - just cannot stand stupidity....)

Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Ooops. I meant think. See, cannot stand stupidity.

speaking of which... i started both for curiousity and to make the next C&C... hehe... then i realized that a 'game' is nothing more than a specilized program... and in that light, so is a virus...

and gee! bad timing to talk about virii... i have my behold demo ready!

Writing a virus is a display of intellectual machismo. It's sophisticated vandalism. An individual feels empowered, and more significant, from writing (and possibly releasing) such a potentially powerful destructive tool.

I think a good analogy for the phenomenon was posted on these boards a while ago: it's a sort of black magic, a power most people don't have and don't truly understand.

I agree with procyon.

Writing a virus in C or asm is really tough. Writing a destructive virus in C or asm is no tougher than writing a benign virus.

Now, writing a virus that does something other than destroy and can still propagate and remain undetected--that is much tougher than a simple destructive virus.

I wish more people would try doing that.

I agree with procyon too, and I also think that people think that virii are cool because they are programs that do stuff which normal programs don't do, they are also some kind of heroes for young people (such as I, I mean age, but I got past that a long time ago), like superman, because they can destroy without being traced or blamed (which is mostly the same thing), and young people want to do that: hurt without being hurt, and they still think that it's some kind of game.

Oskilian

I like Flarelocke's idea. How would I do that, I would have to have the virus copy itself to wherever the code started executing in the exe then would have to make it jmp to wherever the actuall code was supposed to start executing and I would also have to modify the header of the exe to tell it how big it is with the new code but that probly would be picked up by anti-virus software. somebody should try to make something like that.

I have never thought, in my computing lifetime, that virii are/were cool.. I think that it's a ridiculous display of stupidity by the writer. It is building a weapon against your friend to use to his destruction. There is no reason to make a virus. There are compoletely no reasons why it is justifiable to virus someones sytem and destroy important files. There is no sense in it. Those who create virii don't really deserve to live, unless they are doing the virus creation in order to test a firewall or something of that sort (for good reasons, not just to randomly ........ off people).

The reason that we enjoy viruses is because we have a taste of bloodlust for your hard drive.

"Those who create virii don't really deserve to live, unless they are doing the virus creation in order to test a firewall or something of that sort"

test a firewall? dude you dont know what your talking about...

haha.. thank you for pointing that out.

I really should have said something more to the tune of 'testing out the security of a system' or soemthing like that.

Whatever, man, i think you get the point.

You hate me, don't you?

I think people write viruses for the same reason that they try to crack into computer systems: for unwholesome, immature fun. It's the immaturity factor. These would be the same people who might go out egging or T.P.'ing people's houses for fun.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with AIM (AOL Instant Messenger); but, every so often, a cracker discovers a new exploit for it that allows people to crash other people's copies of AIM by sending an instant message. A person by the screen name of LmrRivaRat just used a new punt that works on AIM 4.7.2480 (Win32) today; it was a punt that causes Windows to run out of font resources and causes AIM to perform an illegal operation. I had to reset my computer to get AIM to restart! Again, it is the same immaturity and rudeness factor.

The time when virii were just some infantile jokes or the revenge of frustrated programmers has ended.

Nowadays, the VIRUS is a strategical weapon and a real threat as well, as computers become the part of our life.

I heard that in the yugoslavian war NATO blocked the most important informational highways in Belgrad using virus attacks.

Terrorism on the net...coming soon?
:confused:

Look at Code Red.
If they had REALLY wanted to do some damage to the White House with it the code would have done a DNS lookup, not have the White House IP hard coded (not as easy to side step for the White House).

So why? Why the White House?
Maybe to because attacking MS would have not been allowed to get out. MS does not bother to patch it's own servers, why should we bother?

Take down a power plant/water works ect and if it is down for a few hours it will take a few weeks to get working again. Think how your city would go without power/water for two weeks.

Could we turn off the internet if we had to?

(Remember Kiddies, it maybe easy to get in, but its getting rid of your foot-prints on the way out that matters.)

I have a whole differente view on this than the one i'm getting from most of the posts.

Hacking and writting virii makes computer systems better, indirectly of course. When a hacker breaks in to a network it's network admin racks his head trying to figure out how he/she got in a to prevent it from happening again. The some goes for virii, but big companies like Microsoft don't seem to be as diligent as the regular sysadmin, unfortunately.

Now i know this fact in no way excuses these actions for they are in too many cases done with malicious intent. But they in themselves are not malicious.

I believe that computer systems need to be constantly attacked to keep up their strength. I don't believe it should be done strangers with malicious intent, though.

If a company hires someone to attack their system and work with the sysadmin to make it stronger, i think nothing would be better.

Now the same doesn't apply to Anti-Virus software for a simple reason: those companies profit from existance of virii. The companies that should take advantage of the virii to improve their products are, basically, the OS companies (ie: Microsoft).

I've heard, i don't know if its true since i've never worked in that enviroment, that Linux is pretty much inmune to virii, is that so?

Oh well, just my 2cents.

adios,
biterman.