Who write's Virus's ????

I'm a network engineering student and would like to hear some opinions and links if possible in relation to what kind of person writes a virus...is it paid for and who pays for it. It's part of my research. You can email me on
tonyw77@bigpond.net.au if u can help

Cheers
 
people usually are trying to make money or something. if i ever meet one of e'm, they'll be getting a taste of that 2ft peice of pipe i use to smash oem builds. i have plenty of memories of what viruses have done t people and thier businesses...
 
The way I see it, a variety of different people do different things for different reasons.

However, purely because it's easier, I'm going to break the nerdy stereotype, and replace it with a few more accurate stereotypes to try to explain my thoughts...

First, of course, there is always going to be the nerdy, living with mom, no friends, virgin computer guru types. I should imagine though that they are few and far between. They write virii just to A) give themselves something to do to have an impact on the world, B) because they can, and C) to make themselves feel good and genius like.

Secondly, there are script-kiddies who have very similar reasons for partaking in this activity as the nerdy types, but the fact is that they are even lower than that - they have little knowledge or ability of their own, and so take published virus source code (or de-compile it if they are clever enough) and add small new features to it or make small changes to the way it works. Essentially, they are just taking someone elses achievement (good or bad, writing a good virus from scratch is an achievement, even if it is immoral to spread it) and making token changes so that their inflated egos can call it their own work, and often proceed to brag about it.

Thirdly, there are those who's aim is to get a company to repair a flaw in their software having seen that a company is doing nothing about it. The hacker group 'The Cult of the Dead Cow' did this with BackOrifice 2000 (which strickly speaking was a Trojan Horse and not a virus). The Jury is still out on exactly how moral or immoral this is (it's slightly ambiguous).

Fourth, there are those of the mob/gang mentality who are hell-bent on nothing but destruction for fun (deliberate network vandalism). They release virii to create destruction, and improve on their code to try to out perform other groups, and now and then to sabotage the efforts of other virus writers(as was seen last year). These people are just complete and total wasters that really could put their talent to far more productive uses.

It is also not unknown for Crackers (note the distinction between hackers and crackers) to write virii, but given that crackers know what they are doing and work at individual systems, it's very rare they ever have a use for them, and so very rarely have a need to write them.

There are then the really nasty pices of work that write virii and trojans for profit. Unfortunately for us, the profit is made by a virus writer offering his or here services to a spammer or two.

There are the hobbyists then, with an interest in virii who write them, and then somehow accidentally release them into the wild. This doesn't really happen that often to any serious degree.

Last but not least, there are no doubt people who have written virii purely for revenge. Maybe they got sacked from their job and wanted to get back at the company or some such, and the virus spreads from there.

I've probably missed a few different types and scenario's and some of my thoughts may not be 100%, but I hope they are helpful in understanding why different types of people might try to write these things.
 
people who write viruses do it for many reasons....

some write them as experiments. In fact, the first virus was written as a college project to determine artificial replication. Needless to say it was successful.

Some write them for political statements - i.e. anti microsoft etc....

others for malicious purposes (there are always people with evil intentions....)

yet others write them for immature sh*ts and giggles..... i.e. immature teenagers with nothing else better to do.

and lastly, some are written for government and/or corporate computer warfare purposes.
 
i rember reading some where that a virus maker was making a virus and infected there own computer, ha ha lol
 
Hypocrits in the sense that most malware writers think it's ok for them to "explore" other ppl's systems and networks violating their rights, but if anyone does it to them, or restricts their ability to do so, that's wrong and is a violation of their "rights".
 
Yeah but it is a good topic :)

From my experience, nowadays, most Virii are written by children in Turkey and Malasia with nothing better to do then be malicious. Now The Virii and Worms of the "Good Old Days"... now thats a Thread starter...

Chernobyl
Bubbles
Walker
....on and on and on...
 
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