August 04, 2004

• He is SO grounded!
• Hate to be a nit picker but the article says the teen... ...was responsible for 70 per cent of all viruses received worldwide in the first half of this year. That doesn't mean he wrote a lot of viruses, it just means that his viruses were far more infectious than others released in the same time period. Stupid smart script kiddies.
• I noticed that right after I posted it. Should be more accurate.
• But really... he must have been really, really smart... so why didn't he really think that he could get in trouble for it?
• that would be the "teen" part, Fabala.
• Of course. Silly me.
• Damnit! Why can't any of my friends be uber-smart hackers so I can turn them in for a reward?! P.S. Before any of you get all upset about betraying friends and whatnot: 1) I really despise virus-writers - they taint the profession of programming with an undeserved whiff of corruption and 2) two hundred and fifty-thousand big ones! Two-hundred and fifty-thousand! The funny bit is going to be when this little cretin emerges from whatever cell he's thrown into.
• ...and gets immediately hired by Symantec. Well, it is what he's hoping. But I wonder how often this really happens -- it seems like every busted black hat hacker immediately develops a fantasy of putting on a white or gray hat instead. I actually wonder if he isn't exaggerating his 'achievements' for this reason, or simply because virus writers do seem to write for attention, just like many criminals.
• Admittedly I don't know much about this sort of thing, but I'd guess his odds of being hired rely on the ingenuity of his viruses. (virii?) If he came up with a new way of writing them, or somehow made them more effective, then I'd say he has a good shot at a job. If all he did was cut-and-paste, but happened to be particularly prolific, I'd say he's only going to be shunned by the anti-virus community.
• (virii?) The Hat has spoken. No hard feelings. Really. *hides 100 Ton Hammer™ behind back*
• But what color is the hat?
• After I read that headline to a co-worker, the first thing he said was, "Do they have the death penalty in Germany?" And as wrong as it is, it's hard not to echo the sentiment. There should be a special place in hell for computer virus writers and spammers.
• Spammers I agree. They must die. Virus writers? Not as much. More or less, the majority of these guys are script kiddies. You want to point blame at someone, blame the market-driven, useless feature-oriented pile of shit that is everything Microsoft since NT4. If you're gonna ask for the death penalty for virus writers, you should also push for criminal negligence on Microsoft's part. And don't get me started on your average 'doze user...
• I have to agree with surlyboi. Viruses are written with Windows/Outlook/IE in mind because there are so many relatively easy ways to knock it on its ass. More and more Windows users are becoming security-conscious (my internet-naive parents being a classic example) and installing spyware, anti-virus software and firewalls. Then you just have to convince them that they don't really need to open every attachment...
• This reminds me of the time the Melissa virus orginator was caught and I saw his mugshot. Yes, that's a big happy grin on his face.
• Ok. Just because one can do something really destructive due to the neglegence of others, doesn't mean one should. Most people don't really have the option to use something other than Microsoft products but it's the innocent bystanders that get hurt the most. So by all means, be mad at MS, but people who exploit weaknesses that hurt largely innocent people are bad and wrong.
• Agreed, don't do it because you can. But I still hold MS more responsible because they've had more than ample time to fix all this stuff, but they're more interested in furthering their monopoly than actually doing anything to stop this outside of paying a pittance to bring in some random script kiddie to distract the public from that fact.