

Old-skool virus writers still exist.  - FSecurePal
http://pastebin.com/8ZN3BVTJ

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ique
What exactly is "Old-skool" in virus-writing and what is new-school?

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gregschlom
Back in the days viruses had to hide themselves in executables to travel from
machine to machine, undetected.

Today, as most users don't care about what processes are running on their
system, and since the most common vector of infection is through the internet,
what we call "viruses" are actually worms: they don't infect other programs,
they are just self-replicating, malicious, executables.

~~~
axod
older school: boot sector viruses which triggered when an infected floppy was
left in a machine on bootup. They'd then TSR and infect any other floppys
inserted into the machine, as well as any hard disk drives if the machine was
an expensive newer model with a hard card.

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rbanffy

      "- Microsoft
      hh86:  love it"

~~~
Luyt
Why do all these virii start with 'W32.' ? ;-)

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Confusion

      virii
    

OT, but please: viruses. In Latin, 'virus' is like 'sand': it has no plural
(and if it would've had a plural, it would've been 'viri').

[http://stason.org/TULARC/security/computer-virus/14-Is-it-
vi...](http://stason.org/TULARC/security/computer-virus/14-Is-it-viruses-
virii-or-what.html)

~~~
lmkg
> and if it would've had a plural, it would've been 'viri'

That's not immediately clear. Depending on whether you think it's second or
fourth declension, and masculine or neuter, the various possibilities are
virua, vira, virūs, and viri. My best guess is that the "correct" usage was
one of the more exotic varients (virua or vira), but the word was so rare that
many people didn't learn the nuances, and instead adopted it to the more
common patterns. Similar to how "begs the question" is often used incorrectly,
and that ends up becoming an accepted usage.

However, the plural could not have been "virii."

~~~
paulgerhardt
<http://www.ofb.net/~jlm/virus.html>

More than either of you two probably want to know about the subject.

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Leynos
Do viruses of this type (exe infecting) still have much impact "in the wild"?
Most news these days seems to be about worms and trojan horses. I presume this
is because it's harder to transport a "useful" payload inside of a true virus,
so they are more often than not written to satisfy the curiosity of the
author.

~~~
drdaeman
In old days, software were copied (yeah, on floppies) from friend to friend. A
true "sneakernet" P2P^W F2F-network.

Nowadays, software is either obtained directly from authors (or packagers), or
from more centralized P2P sources, and, in my personal perception, most of
time flash drives are used is to transfer documents, not executables.

~~~
bad_user
Planning.doc.exe

~~~
drdaeman
Yeah, and autorun.inf, and a lot of other tricks. That's not generally
considered "old-skool", though.

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alexsherrick
why would you want to write viruses?

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tptacek
It's a way to play Core Wars across the whole Internet with other people's
computers.

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waste
I am torn by these young tinkerers; on one hand they're exploring the
technology around them unlike most their peers, but on the other hand they
very often seem to be totally full of themselves.

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gsivil
I think that the title of that post does not do justice to the interview. Old-
skool vs New School is a tiny part of an interview representative of the
psychology of a virus writer. Virus writing seems like the most brilliant way
to kill your creativity. Or in other words making your creativity a slave of
the most boring of all arts: destruction.

~~~
adimitrov
Well, you can destroy something blandly, or you can destroy it in an
intricate, even intelligent fashion. Just as you can create something blandly
— to just barely serve its purpose.

See, destruction is also creation. She _creates_ viruses. These things then go
on to destroy other stuff.

Destruction is not at all a boring art. It's as legitimate an art as creation.

Somewhere around 10th grade I finally gave in to my urge to put a lot of
energy behind a simple question: why do parasites exist? Why are there lice,
ticks, bacteria and viruses?

Turns out they do, just because they do. They're legitimate 'creations,'
living beings. And in non-parasitic beings, they inspire toughness and
survival strategies — if it can't adapt to the parasite (in one way or
another) it'll die out.

Really, I don't get why people are biased against 'evil' black hats. If they
target you and your app failed, you better get some security going. It's
better some 'artist' who just feels the need to destroy intricate systems in
an ingenuous fashion makes me aware of my security holes than someone with a
malicious intent.

From the interview, I can't see anything sociopathic or even malevolent in her
(granted, I haven't read the whole thing.)

~~~
gsivil
Thanks for sharing another point of view. The destructive force of kids, and
their love to create traps and make pranks is something that I really like.
The life of non-human parasites or microbes is at least amazing, I am with you
in that. My point was that destruction is the most obvious form of expression,
for these reason we see it every time in kids. Personally I find it
boring(since it is obvious and in a sense natural)- I can not change that. Of
course somebody could tell me how come I do not complain about people that
make sophisticated weapons for example. This is a whole different discussion.

~~~
adimitrov
I'm with you when you say that I find it more engaging now to create useful
stuff, or generally beneficial stuff.

But when I was a teenager, it was quite different. I admired black hats, and
people who wrote viruses, because they were playing a game: there were people
whose sole existence was based on working _against_ these 'bad guys.' They got
paid to fix security holes, to design programs in an 'un-hackable' manner. And
yet, the intruders often prevailed. It's a game of outsmarting. There's
someone, incredibly smart, trying to prevent you from achieving goal x. He's
getting paid, probably has a whole team of experts around him. And yet, you
find your way into the system; break it. That sounded almost heroic to me.

Of course, the whole metaphor works even better when you're discontent, or
even at odds with society at large. Read: when you're pretty much every
teenager on this planet :-D

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r11t
Reminds me of another female virus writer "Gigabyte" who she references in the
interview : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte_(virus_writer)>

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netatalk
\- Dark Avanger

Have not heard that name in a while! Admired his code

