Gaming Why do people make viruses???

[gifi4]

Why do people make viruses? I mean, why would other people want to destroy someones personal files?? I guess they are sort of terrorists, but why?

 

[Joe88]

alot of people do it for fun
other to prove they are better

 

[jan777]

Theory:
The Anti virus companies make some viruses. So that they can have their business going on.

A nice strategy.

 

[kenio8185]

For computers, viruses are mostly made to steal personal info. If they are destructive, generally it's just so that the virus can't be traced back to its original source. However, they are used to steal stuff like credit card info, and other personal data so someone could assume your identity.

As for why they are made for things like the DS. My guess is that it's someone who thinks pirating is wrong and wants to teach those who pirate a lesson.

 

[gifi4]

Theory:
The Anti virus companies make some viruses. So that they can have their business going on.

A nice strategy.

lol, yeah that would be a good strategy.
And they make sure that their AV's can catch their viruses straight away. =)

 

[Originality]

Actually the percentage of virii made by terrorists is quite low. Around half the virii in the world are from interweb privateers who are simply data-mining for profit. Most of the rest are from anarchists (who are always more dangerous than terrorists).

There are some AV groups that do create virii in controlled research environments. They generally don't release them because if they ever got traced (i.e. caught red handed), they could be liable for a rather large law suite. Breach of trust, amongst other things.

On the casual side, some virii are just made for the intellectual challenge, or for small scale contests of rivalry between peers. On the other hand, there are many "virii" that are simply highly adaptable programs built for a specific purpose (e.g. for hunting more malicious virii - a counter-virus).

 

[tatripp]

anyone who makes a virus to harm is a complete jerk and is worse than a thief.

 

[mad567]

They create viruses s that they can sell treir defensive programs against those viruses......

Think of the world without viruses.......Many industries would have just been closed right now

 

[Infinite Zero]

-For profit!
-Fun!
-Proving they have skill!
-Boredom! The love letter virus was created by a Filipino

he made it for absolutely no reason at all.

 

[Law]

Some people just want to fill other people's computers with their octopus drawing.

 

[Cyan]

I think there are different kind of purpose.

- the one which spy (send your credit cards info, login/passwords etc), usually unnoticeable, as their purpose is not to let you know they are here (no popup, etc.).
- the one which annoy, open many windows, advertisings, popup, etc. usually hard to disable, as there's many process at the same time. no real purpose except annoy you. This one could be made to prove themselves they can program something better than the previous virus developer.
- The one which annoy, but harder : deletes files, infect itself into other files, making it harder to remove, resulting in loss of data.
It can be from annoying to destructive (you need to format, if it deletes system files/corrupt boot/etc.)
- the one which waits on your computer for a command, it can waits for month without you noticing. This one is usually used as a gateway to use your computer to send virus to another computers, to prevent the targeted computer to find the original source. This method is usually used to make DDOS attack to website.
The pirate send millions of viruses to millions of computers, and give command to send dummy data to a same website at the same time, resulting in an overflow and blocking the website from the net.

 

[KirovAir]

For fun, and for the fame.
Viruses are fun to code, and it's cool to see that the spreading works. Best guess now is via MSN messages, or controlling older outlook clients via VBA scripting, just as the Melissa virus did; simple and effective.

 

[FireGrey]

Because they have no life

 

[Originality]

You know, it really is fun to create adaptive programs (i.e. non-malicious virii) designed to accomplish a certain task. It gets even better when you program a series of them that synergise and accomplish many tasks.

But there will always be those that use malicious virii for data mining (because you can make a rediculous profit from it) or simple damage (because kids can, and they are the type of kids that like to pull the legs off a spider before splatting it with a rubber mallet). Of course, there are cyber-terrorists aswell, but they tend not to have the same level of intelligence as those lil anarchists.

The most annoying virii are the ones used in hacker duels - ones designed to hit as many computers as possible, leave a mark, send a ping (for tallying), then move on. Sure, they're easy to get rid of, but it gets many people involved in a stupid game with no real purpose.

 

[CrimzonEyed]

our IT teacher made a virus when he was a kid on his moms job.
he made a little dick followed the mouse pointer and tryed to screw the mouse

 

[Wabsta]

Some people just want to fill other people's computers with their octopus drawing.

Hahaha, definitely this.

Anyway, I think they just do it out of boredom?
I could imagine myself in a few years, when I have some lame coding job at some lame company, making viruses to anoy people and fill my own boredom.

EDIT: spelling.

 

[Zerousen]

Some people just want to fill other people's computers with their octopus drawing.

Hahaha, definitely this.

Anyway, I think they just do it out of boredome?
I could imagine myself in a few years, when I have some lame coding job at some lame company, making viruses to anoy people and fill my own boredom.

Haha,I guess that makes sense. I one had a virus that was disguised as an exe with a....vampire icon..? it was a pretty lame one too, but was effective...

 

[KirovAir]

Some people just want to fill other people's computers with their octopus drawing.

Hahaha, definitely this.

Anyway, I think they just do it out of boredom?
I could imagine myself in a few years, when I have some lame coding job at some lame company, making viruses to anoy people and fill my own boredom.

Exactly. On my old school, I created a worm that replaced itself with every EXE it found. It made a backup of the original EXE though. (.exe.bak)
Ironicly, I made it during boring programming lessons.
The fun part was that it also searched remote folders, which caused a spread throughout every teacher computer.
(First, I placed it in the shared students folder (H:\), and called it answers.exe, which looked like a .doc document. (really simple/lame) Then, it would copy itself through the computer/other network locations which contained .exe files. When a teacher opened, it would also have access to Teacher-remote folders, which was the big fun..)
Next to the copy part, it would only replace the background with a black background, and red letters that said 'the original files are now called .exe.bak'. Still it took our school IT section about a week to figure that hint out..

 

[Rayder]

Personally, I think anyone who purposely creates any type of virus, whether it be to destroy data or to steal personal info, should be treated as an international terrorist and dealt with accordingly.

 

[FAST6191]

Many of the reasons already given are what I would have written so no need to repeat them.

As an echo to the for profit things you also have the likes of people leaving university (or coming back from and the like and having the ever fun experience of "do you have at least 5 years continuous experience for this junior programmer job with pay and hours to match that of your average part time fast food worker".
At this point many* will meet some of the more unsavoury characters who will quite happily fork over a grand for something fairly simple but will earn them many times that- unfortunately I have seen it happen/had it happen to many of my associates that play programmer, fabricator or scientist/engineer for years as have their parents and beyond. You head into somewhere like rural Russia, eastern Europe, south America or a lot of Asia (code is code/physics is physics after all) it is gets far more common and easier to pull off.

Equally one of the big things these days are virus toolkits that allow any skiddy to play proper virus creator (or at least have the impact of one- until the toolkit creator uses a hidden option and takes control of "their works").

*if this has not happened to you and your response was something like "why does stuff like that never happen to me" instead consider yourself lucky.