Virus Writers - The Enemy Within

Slob Nerd writes "An interesting read from todays Observer "He's 21, he's got dreadlocks, likes punk bands... and his hobby could wreck your computer in seconds. Clive Thompson infiltrates the secret world of the virus writers who see their work as art - while others fear that it is cyber-terrorism.""

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you do not work at MS huh?

"from the dept."

[PollGuy]

Think that's code for "From the >/dev/null dept."?

Once twice thrice...

[CGP314]

First time from wired... it's a story.

Second time on NYT... it's a dupe.

Third time on the observer... it's a trupe?

-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]

Re:My Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this:

Every time an editor posts a duplicate story he gets a public beating with a razorwire bat. The beatings are recorded to Windows Media Player files and made available for download every Friday night.

cash money

[CGP314]

Boy, I'd love to be the author of that article. He just keeps making money selling it over and over again. In addition the paper's owners must take note of his name when it draws a metric herd of slashdotters.

::Walks off to write an article about virii::

-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]

Re:Once twice thrice...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to go with calling it a "tripe". That's an apt description in this case.

OT: Punk?

[nurb432]

Since when is Iron Maden considered punk? Geesh, pansy...

Nice guy

[Dark Lord Seth]

'Anyone can rewrite a hard drive with one or two lines of code,' he says. 'It makes no sense. It's really lame.' Besides which, it's mean, he says, and he likes to be friendly.

Then come over and install your friendly little programs on my PC. You can do so for free! No more annoying "distribution" anymore, you just come here, install your friendly little program and leave*, that is all. Sounds like a deal? Tell me in advance, because I might need to buy some essentials** for your visit.

* Might or might not involve a hearse.
** Like a toe tag and body bag.

Re:Complete Bullshit

[Dutchmaan]

If that mutant strain of bacteria turned people into random primary colors, I'd be all for it for arts sake..

Re:My Hero

[Have Blue]

Not a dupe, but a tripe! Oh, wait...

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, same with murderers. If there weren't any murders people wouldn't be as prepared to defend themselves, and they'd be more vulnerable to any murderers that came along.

Re:Wreck MY computer?

[Anonymous Coward]

they meant "your friend's computer"

like I said, I spend my time running Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. You think I'd do that if I had friends?

Second Part to Hell

[rjshields]

When Mario is bored, he likes to sit at his laptop and create computer viruses and worms. Online, he goes by the name Second Part to Hell.

I suggest a new handle for Mario - Two Sandwiches Short of a Picnic

Re:Anyone ever seen well written english?

[Shisha]

Oh dear, this thread really exposes the state of the Slashdot community: Grand-grandparent can't use adverbs properly, grandparent makes a typo, while correcting someone's grammer and finally the parent:

I assume it's not a typographical error.

shows that he has little clue about the fact, that typography is about designing thing containg text in such a way, that makes them aesthetically pleasing.

The question now is, of course, what have I screwed up? :-)

Re:Embellishment

[AndroidCat]

Allow me my rose coloured glasses. I might suspect that all news stories are equally flawed, but it's only the "teenage haxor angst" ones that I know are flawed. :^)

News stories are definitely like sausages and laws--never ever watch any of them being made.

Re:Anyone ever seen well written english?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question now is, of course, what have I screwed up? :-)

while correcting someone's grammer

That's "grammar."

Re:My Hero

[Anonymous Coward]

> Slashdot editors won't even have to read
> slashdot anymore!

Cause, y'know, they did ?

Re: My Hero

[Black Parrot]

> And just three days after that, it appeared here:

Maybe it's a viral story?

Re:My Hero

[gruntled]

The New York Times, like most large papers, offers its stories to other publications via the wire, which these days is just an FTP server. When I broke a big story, my byline appeared in papers all over the world.

What about the article itself?

[Mr. Foofy]

How many more times does that article have to appear in newspapers before it's considered a virus? ;)

Re:Anyone ever seen well written english?

[iamanatom]

It should be 'great grandparent' rather than 'grand-grandparent'.

Re:... and his homepage ...

[HawkingMattress]

Reminds me of going to a computer store and editing autoexec.bat to do an ECHO "THIS COMPUTER SUCKS" loop when I was 10 years old. Would really confuse the people who worked there

That was you ! I spent 10 hours trying to repair the machine at work and was finally fired for being incompetent. Then my wife left me and since this time I've been alone in this dark room reading /. ...
Damn kids !

Re:Embellishment

[Deraj DeZine]

I...very rarely use any...quotes in context...every story I've...done...I...tainted...And, most of the time, I'm...more accurate...than the story that I'm following up on.

This guy has no idea what he's talking about. Mainstream media reporters do great work. This man contradicts himself and generally brags about how he exploits ellipses to twist people's words around on Slashdot (though presumably, he does this in everyday conversation). He clearly has no credibility.

Sincerely,
FOX News. Fair and balanced.

+1 Interesting

[eugene ts wong]

You really do have an interesting point. If sending a virus to my computer can be called art or intelligence or cleverness, then can kicking in the virus writer's knees be considered art or cleverness? After all, the kicker is just exploiting a the weakness of the kickee, in the same manner that the virus writer is exploiting a weakness of someone else. It would be artistic because it would be sending a message, & it would displaying the human body in a way that isn't usually done. It would certainly get the kickee to think.

Re:Embellishment

[eugene ts wong]

I'm just

happy about constantly getting misquoted.

Then what seems to be the problem? ;^p