Virus Creators Sharing More Code 205
arpy writes "The Washington Times is carrying a report on a 5% increase in publicly available virus code in 2003 (based on a Symantec report). There are now about seven versions of MyDoom, and at least 14 each of Netsky and Beagle. Explains why my email account is overloaded with these little bastards. PC World is reporting changes in the countries that virus are originating from: Australia shot from 14th place to 5th over the last six months of 2003! The source of these stories seems to be the March 2004 Symantec Internet Security Threat Report." (This last requires registration to download.)
Now that there is more code available... (Score:5, Funny)
The folks whose machines are that vulnerable probably need a little "housekeeping" help...
Ballmer & Gates are right (Score:5, Funny)
I for one (Score:3, Funny)
My contribution to the Virus community (Score:0, Funny)
Open Source bad? (Score:3, Funny)
uh oh ... (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean Norton and McAfee are going to merge companies ?
You want some viral code? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Now that there is more code available... (Score:5, Funny)
What? And put all of us MCSEs out of work?
Damn. I knew my job was gonna get outsourced....
I don't have any. (Score:4, Funny)
You must have lots of friends and or family. I suggest you get a lesser life form companion and lose all ties to other sentient beings. Especially dumb ones with computers.
I wonder... (Score:2, Funny)
I mean... if windows source is leaked and widespread, that's gotta be the ultimate virus source code spread in the latest years.
Ladies and Gentleman... WE GOT THEM! (Score:5, Funny)
No.. (Score:2, Funny)
Your account is overloaded because your mail server sucks. Don't you have a virus scan?
I don't get any virus emails at all. Hmm.
Re:Now that there is more code available... (Score:5, Funny)
"Open" viruses (Score:4, Funny)
Morse Code?!? (Score:2, Funny)
It's inspiring! (Score:4, Funny)
This must be a direct result of Mel Gibson's "The Passion Of The Christ". This holy movie has inspired a new culture of charity that is reaching down even to the virus writers, who so selflessly test the security of the world's computers so that we may all sleep more soundly, or... something.
*sniff* It gets me right here.
No, here. A little to the left. A little more.
Now scratch.
Aahhh....
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:never seen a virus in my entire life (Score:4, Funny)
Pffft! Silly rabbit! You we're supposed to set it to puree.
>Since then I decided never to care about virus again and I've never seen any.
Must be some quantum thing.
>Any similar experiences among /.ers ?
My hard drive once crashed, and in the random noise I found a sequel to King Lear.
Open Source (Score:4, Funny)
if any virus creator is reading this... (Score:3, Funny)
Screw you and the trojan horse you rode in on.
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Sharing (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ballmer & Gates are right (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Now that there is more code available... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn. I knew my job was gonna get outsourced....
Suddenly all of those "go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script" t-shirts start to make a lot more sense...
Pfft... (Score:2, Funny)
Computer Virus (Score:3, Funny)
Those PC's that succumb and die from infections, leave only the strongest PC's to repopulate the earth. It's happened all throughout nature since time began. Consider this the "electronic black plague".
Great for cross-platform (Score:4, Funny)
Viruses is closed-source, proprietary software that only runs on Windows.
A lot of nice guys are trying all day long to send me ".pif" files so that I can have fun, but I keep clicking and clicking again, nothing happens on my OpenBSD box. It's so disappointing.
Thanks to these opensource virus, I will probably soon be able to enjoy a
Great, I will now be able to chat with friends "hey what ? You still don't have Baggle 8.3XP ? Haha sucker, I got it for 3 days !".
Re:if any virus creator is reading this... (Score:2, Funny)
Must be getting older malware coders. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:email account management (Score:3, Funny)
Send out a virus that eats your name out of their address books, then emails itself to all their friends. Now no one ever emails me...
An introduction to viruses (Score:5, Funny)
Virus are popular peer-to-peer sharing systems designed and optimized for Windows platforms.
Great features of these systems over other P2P systems
- It's free software, although the license is often missing.
- They are very well maintained. New versions are released almost every day.
- They are easy to use : no need for a GUI, no need for a CLI, everything is fully automated.
- Updates are also automatic.
- No need to tweak your firewall, popular viruses can work on port 25 using a SMTP-like protocol.
In order to join this community, you just have to run an installer called "outlook.exe". To improve your experience, the "internet explorer" add-on is also recommended.
And how handy, the installer and its add-on are part of the vanilla "Windows" installation CD set. No need to download anything and no registration is required. Very convenient.
Once the installer ("outlook.exe") has been started, an Evolution-like interface pops up. This is bloat, it can be safely ignored. Directly go to the "add contact" panel and fill in email addresses of friends you want to share executable with. Wait a few minutes (check the internet link is ok) et voila, viruses are automatically downloaded, installed and configured.
You know understand why this p2p system is so popular in the Windows world : easy to install, easy to use, and the operating system keeps a lot of unfixed security holes in order to avoid breaking backward-compatibility with older viruses.
Re:Now that there is more code available... (Score:2, Funny)
Yep, that's the "automagically" part.
I bet the next opensource virus will say ... (Score:2, Funny)
Looking Forward (Score:3, Funny)
Which means that certain marketing drones will run around in circles screaming "See! See! We told you so!"
Re:Now that there is more code available... (Score:5, Funny)
I went over to the house of one of the "higher up" people in my organization to set up some VPN software on her Windows 2000 computer. She had no virus software, no firewall, a cable connection, and left her computer on all of the time without patching. Needless to say, her laptop was completely compromised. Oddly enough, the hard drive was being defragged every day and some sort of background running software firewall had been installed. The attacker had actually secured her box and was doing routine maintenance!
Yay! (Score:3, Funny)
Yay! exports are up. I knew all the toadying to the US would pay off for us eventually.