Why do people send /make a computer virus?

[Ultimator]

Originally posted by Python14
I get viruses and such periodically just because I really don't have much regard for my computer, or it's health. I personally think they do it for the same reason we make faster, lighter, brighter, cooler, flashier things for paintball. But the difference is, when I make a new harness, I challenge my sewing skills and make it as good as I can. The stupid l33t haxor whatever spazzes, they don't. They hack into computers that no one cares about. It's not like I really care if they find my stash of history papers. It's not impressive in any way shape or form if you hack into my computer. It's harder to break into a fortune cookie for gods sake. What is so cool about giving a sick computer a virus. Nothing.

I highly doubt an individual "hacker" would waste his time on your computer. You were probably the victim of an e-mail virus or something.

"Hacker" as a term is misused a lot. I think you call are talking about crackers, they are the ones who do harm to other people. Hackers, most of the time, are programmers or something like that. Crackers do what they do pretty much to feel special. Most of them end up being caught one way or another anyway. I think I saw once that one kid even got satellite codes from the US government and was selling them online to some foreign country. The next morning the FBI woke him up with an M16 to his head. It's like being handed power on a plate and you can do good or bad with it.

The hilarious thing is a lot of them get millions of dollar a year jobs designing protection programs for huge companies like Yahoo or Microsoft.

[pbstu]

i would say crackers do it because 1. they can 2. they seem to despise the average stupid computer user 3. they have a touch of the anarchy in them, gotta destroy something. making a virus is like a creative outlet for programmers, its code, its like an artist painting.

hackers are people who approach computer problems from different angles repeatedly, they 'hack' at it until they solve the problem.



stu.

[�.C.]

I hope that kid got shot with the bullet, it's bad enough cracking, but if the government wanted to keep something a secret then they probably have a good reason. Releasing information like that can harm millions. Doing bad things to buisnesses and average people is bad enough, but when you do it to our defense(God knows what kindo f satelite it was), it is just pain stupid.

[Ultimator]

I hope that kid got shot with the bullet, it's bad enough cracking, but if the government wanted to keep something a secret then they probably have a good reason. Releasing information like that can harm millions. Doing bad things to buisnesses and average people is bad enough, but when you do it to our defense(God knows what kindo f satelite it was), it is just pain stupid.

To my knowledge all he got was community service and he now works for Microsoft :P

BTW This was only a couple years back .. and the kid was only about 17 or so.

[Coaster]

Originally posted by FactsOfLife
virus writers/hackers ought to get some nasty disease, wherein their gentialia enlarge to the point that they have to carry them around in wheelbarrows.

there'd be no doubt about what they did...

bastards.

elephantitis! When i took biology, they showed us a picture of exactly what you described

[giblit]

i dont know if a trojan is technically a virus, i heard it wasnt, ive never gotten a virus, but ive gotten several trojans from D2 ****.

[Miscue]

Creating dangerous viruses, exploits, and what not... takes a lot of skill and knowledge... the average person (including script kiddies) is of no comparison and could probably never duplicate such things on their own in a lifetime. The thing is, there's a lot of people with these skills who have the right mixture of psychological disorders to end up doing such things. They want to prove something. They want to show how "smart" they are. They want to throw mud into people's faces. They want to land sucker punches on various organizations... and laugh at them. They want to feel powerful.

Bunch of really weird people with parts of their brains being overactive, and the other parts malfunctioning.

However, I do believe that they have some benefit. The more they pick at our systems, the more difficult we can make it to compromise our systems. I'd say that w/o this, we'd be much more vulnerable to an enemy attack of our computer systems.

[WicKeD_WaYz]

actually there are some things such as mail bombs that dont take much knowledge to do. Now a days it is somewhat easy if you have enough time on your hands and computer knowledge to access a mail bomb and send it to someone. I have friends that have them on there computer. They just havnt "turned them on" Its scary to think what 16 year olds with the internet can pull off.

[Miscue]

That's along the lines of 'script kiddie'. Any fool can find a mail bomber... any amateur programmer can make one.

Not every fool knows how to do his own packet crafting from scratch... and then do something with it that hasn't been done before... things of that nature.