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Title pretty much says it all, why do we get these annoying little codes that completely ruin computers. What is the motive, where is the satisfaction, why bother?

Or is it the antivirus companies themselves paying coders to create viruses so they can perpetuate their market place? (conspiracy theory )

In case anyone is wondering why i bring up this subject, i spent the better part of yesterday attempting to fix a machine that had a virus flashed BIOS (not my machine), it was not fun I am impressed with the work of the coder, but i would probably slap him if i ever met him, or at least call him a bad name, like turd Of course i would compliment him on his good work first

Opinions?

I know of some guys who do it for ideological reasons.like a fanaticly devoted anti muslam guy sent viruses through chains of Iraqi banks every year.
But to answer your question more directly- I have no idea why people send viruses randomly through emails. and speaking as a man twice ruined by a virus- I would do much more than curse!

I think people who write virus code generally fall into two categories: the malicious and the joyriders.

The first category are the disgruntled employees, ideologues and other nogoodniks who are out to hurt people with their viruses. In general, they have a political or personal agenda and are the more dangerous type of virus writer. I also think their viruses are less likely to get into mainstream circles, and are targeted at a specific computer network or system for some insidius purpose (embezzeling money, wiping hard drives at a former employer, etc.)

The other category are the kids who are either bored or looking for attention. I think these are the folks who write things like the Anna Kornikova and I Love You viruses. Their viruses are less deadly and more of a nuisance. While they may revel in chaos or enjoy causing havoc, these virus writers are not bent on changing the world or getting their way; they just want to get a rise out of someone.

If i met these virus producers they would be in trouble.
One time i had to reformat my whole hardrive and lost all my documents, programs, saved games, term papers and everything.
Man was it a facting pain!

But they do damn good work though!

Edit
I said collectors instead of producers.
D'oh!! I need help!

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Fas ]

Originally posted by Morlock:
<STRONG> I would do much more than curse! </STRONG>

Well i have lost a hard disk to a virus as well and my brother lost a 70'000 word manuscript (luckily in Hard copy ) so i the pain of that

Well generally people are stupid and annoying

people do this, as already said by others, for several reasons.
Ideologic(sp?), "fun", revenge etc.
All these reasons can be hard to understand, but then again, we have criminal people in all other aspect of life, and not many understand these either.


BTW I've never been infected by computer vira - eventhough I get attacked at least one every week.
Last time was the Magister virus

Originally posted by Xandax:
<STRONG>Last time was the Magister virus </STRONG>

Wasn't that one of those virus' that flash the BIOS

What virus?
Explain svp.

Originally posted by Fas:
<STRONG>What virus?
Explain svp.</STRONG>

How do you mean? What virus infected the machine i was talking about?

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Mr Sleep ]

Yes what does this virus do.

Originally posted by Fas:
<STRONG>Yes what does this virus do.</STRONG>

Oh right, well it wrote the entire hard disk with code so it filled up to 100%, it also stopped me from formatting it. I tried FDISK and deleting the partition but as soon as i started to install Win98 it filled the hard disk again. So i started to run out of ideas after that, i tried everything icould think of, but to no avail

EDIT: It also at one point created 4 partitions on the hard disk

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Mr Sleep ]

Originally posted by Mr Sleep:
<STRONG>Wasn't that one of those virus' that flash the BIOS </STRONG>

Nope - Magister infects files without doing any damage - then it lays low for a while, and then activeates by corupting your files (no saving these) and mails around.

The bad thing here is it slowly corrupts files and thus making backup useless since infection and that it is very "contageious"(sp?)

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Xandax ]

Originally posted by Xandax:
<STRONG>Nope - Magister infects files without doing any damage - then it lays low for a while, and then activeates by corupting your files (no saving these) and mails around.
</STRONG>

Right, doesn't it delete icons after a length of time?

Stupid french keyboard!!
Anyway that is bad.
Real bad.
Don't send me any e-mails ok??

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Fas ]

Originally posted by Mr Sleep:
<STRONG>Right, doesn't it delete icons after a length of time?</STRONG>

Damage:

Payload:
Large scale e-mailing: Uses email addresses from the Windows and Eudora Address Book files, Outlook Express Sent Items folder, and Netscape Sent Items files.
Causes system instability: Overwrites hard drives, erases CMOS, flashes the BIOS.
Releases confidential info: It could send confidential Microsoft Word documents to others.

Distribution:

Subject of email: Randomly generated text that can be up to 60 characters long.
Name of attachment: One randomly named infected executable and several randomly selected text or document files
Target of infection: All Windows PE files that are not .dll files.

Well it seems that it does flash the bios - I didn't know that
It also does alot more daamge than the above mentioned .

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Xandax ]

Originally posted by Fas:
<STRONG>Stupid french keyboard!!
Anyway that is bad.
Real bad.
Don't send me any e-mails ok??
</STRONG>

Lets put it this way, it was my bosses computer, and he has about 20+ virus containing emails a day, i get 0 i have only been attacked once personally So i am probably the smallest threat of email viruses on the planet

@Xan, thought so

My computer was infected once by the ,probably unknown, virus named Kaczor.mp;
yep, from Poland!
What it did was writing some four bytes of rubbish at the end of every .exe file it could find. And since it was sitting comfortably in the boot sectors of the disk drives, I couldn't remove it through antivirus software
Had to reinstall Windows, not fun

Why? Because my friends, after years of speculation and observation, I have come to the irrefutable conclusion that some people are just *******s.

Some people do it to "fight the system"... I read in a magazine that the Code Red (IIRC) Virus made the infected PC go to the White House site, and the site server would crash or something...

Can't remember, I'll have to look it up.

One thing I've always been glad for is the fact that virus makers haven't made any viruses that are bad for hardware yet.

Seriously, when the ideas of viruses were first floating in my mind I thought 'you know, someone could easily create a virus that continuously read/writes a hard drive, making bad sectors all over the place and eventually causing a hard drive failure'

Sure, it'd be a slow acting virus but if I wanted to be malicious then I would want to kill something besides software.