Who Actually Creates These Viruses?

Ladywriter1968

23n1th wrote: »

I find it surprising that anyone with a moderate experience of the internet would find it shocking that people are discussing this sort of thing. ATM theres no overt censorship of the internet.

Theres loads of different motivations for writing malware. Now a days I would say the main motivation is money. Theres big money to be made with these things. The files on your system are collateral damage, they dont care about you and these attacks aren't aimed specifically at you.

The computer that "sent" you the malware will more than likely be a computer controlled by someone other than the owner who would be unaware, so sending the virus back (if that was possible) would just reinfect an the already infected computer of some innocent person, making you as back as the person controlling that computer.

I think the nearest you're going to come to the program you're talking about is an antivirus program, though it wont send it back

I see your point now. Well I guess I was surprised that they are all over you tube. Maybe I would have thought that you tube would ban those sorts of videos for hacking and stuff. But I guess they dont care. Unless they hack You Tube itself and shut that down. Then they would.

RobTang

aliEnRIK wrote: »

It would make absolute sense that certain anti virus companies would design viruses. Corruption is rife everywhere

Personally I find it hard to believe the main players would do this (spread viruses), the risk is high and the payout too low.
Not when theres plenty of people who are creating them anyway, and there are researchers who post POC examples of exploits.

But the main thing is theres no appreicable way to judge return on investment, especially when that investment may benefit competitors.

Actually I think a cetain amount of viruses in the ecosystem is healthy, in the same way a certain amount of viruses and bacteria is good for humans.

spannerzone

The main players of Antivirus don't need to create viruses, there are plenty of them out there already! and imagine the huge lawsuits if found out!

Some examples of what viruses can do include Russian crime gangs who created viruses that silently infect many computers, called zombie computers, then they would extort a UK gambling website and say either pay up or they'd crash their gambling site on a busy day (Grand National etc) then if they don't pay up they'd send a command to all those zombie infected PC's to repeatedly visit the site hundreds of times a second over and over... all those PC's attacking the site would stop legitimate gamblers use the site and bring it down to it's knees...

Google "russians extort gamblers with virus"

kermitfrog

Ladywriter1968 wrote: »

is it the system that creates the virus itself by generic or something?

It's gremlins.

fiddiwebb

kermitfrog wrote: »

It's gremlins.

Pah!...the Gremlins...it's the Krites AKA the Critters I tell you :eek:

23n1th

spannerzone wrote: »

The main players of Antivirus don't need to create viruses, there are plenty of them out there already! and imagine the huge lawsuits if found out!

Some examples of what viruses can do include Russian crime gangs who created viruses that silently infect many computers, called zombie computers, then they would extort a UK gambling website and say either pay up or they'd crash their gambling site on a busy day (Grand National etc) then if they don't pay up they'd send a command to all those zombie infected PC's to repeatedly visit the site hundreds of times a second over and over... all those PC's attacking the site would stop legitimate gamblers use the site and bring it down to it's knees...

Google "russians extort gamblers with virus"

Would that not be a botnet with a denial of service/distributed denial of service attack more than a virus.

Ladywriter1968

Thanks for all your comments, its interesting to read.