In article ,
Arrow146 wrote:

Who writes VIRUS programs ?
Who makes a profit from it ?

Any chance it could be those who sell the ANTI VIRUS software ?
Just a thought!!

That thought has been raised by numerous people, over the past couple
of decades (ever since MS-DOS viruses began to be a significant
problem).

I've never heard anyone put forth *any* credible evidence at all,
which indicated that the commercial anti-virus-software companies or
programmers had had anything to do with writing or releasing the
viruses.

Based on what I can see, the motives behind virus and trojanwriting a

- Ego and bragging rights. Releasing a virus which spreads widely and
gets a lot of visibility in the press provides the author(s) with a
sense of importance.

At the moment, there seems to be an ongoing battle between the
authors of two or three of the currently-most-active virus/worm
families. They're actually releasing viruses or worms which [1]
contain code to identify, and remove their rivals' viruses, and [2]
contain bragging "We're the best, they're all losers!" statements
embedded in the code.

- Spamming ability. Quite a few of the more recent viruses, worms,
and trojan horses contain software which installs specialized
email-processing software and web/email/TCP proxy servers. A large
percentage (half or more, I've heard) of the spam flooding the
Internet is now being sent through home PCs on DSL and cable-modem
networks, which have been compromised by these viruses. Previous
spam-fighting efforts had succeeded in shutting down many of the
open email relays, and poorly-installed open proxy servers that the
spammers had been abusing, and it's widely believed that major
spam-gangs have commissioned virus-authors to implement these viral
mail relays. The motive, in this case, is profit: spammers can
flood millions of people with spam at almost no cost, and even a
handful of sales can earn them enough money to be worth the effort.


--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Hi Dave

Perhaps I'm all wet on this, but I thought most reputable ISP's had a
program in place that blocked outgoing e-mail over a certain quantity,
configurable of course to allow certain users their needed outbound
e-mail activity.

I know when I was doing a newsletter that if I tried to send to
everyone on the list at once, my ISP would block the transmission and
an auto-responder would tell me to contact my ISP immediately.
I would do so and tell them I was sending out a newsletter.
They would either A: up my daily mailing limit or B: tell me to break
it into 25 unit pieces.

It seems to me that it wouldn't be to hard to implement a program that
verified the domain of inbound e-mail. Most of the spam I do get has
fraudulent headers.

Although my ISP will do the filtering for me, I still elect to receive
all of my inbound e-mail, including the spam, and have my own sets of
filters that knock about 99% of it out, without fear of losing a valid
e-mail that I should have received.

TTUL
Gary

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 18:17:06 -0000, (Dave Platt)
wrote:

In article ,
Arrow146 wrote:

Who writes VIRUS programs ?
Who makes a profit from it ?
snip

- Spamming ability. Quite a few of the more recent viruses, worms,
and trojan horses contain software which installs specialized
email-processing software and web/email/TCP proxy servers. A large
percentage (half or more, I've heard) of the spam flooding the
Internet is now being sent through home PCs on DSL and cable-modem
networks, which have been compromised by these viruses. Previous
spam-fighting efforts had succeeded in shutting down many of the
open email relays, and poorly-installed open proxy servers that the
spammers had been abusing, and it's widely believed that major
spam-gangs have commissioned virus-authors to implement these viral
mail relays. The motive, in this case, is profit: spammers can
flood millions of people with spam at almost no cost, and even a
handful of sales can earn them enough money to be worth the effort.

You missed revenge and or jealousy...The DOS attacks against specific
sites because they either do or say something the writer happens to
disagree with, or doesn't like.

Most viruses and worms are relatively simple and many have depended on
the gullibility of the user to actually run them. Links to malicious
sites from newsgroup postings...(See what ever star in the shower,
Go here for an interesting site) There must be users dumb enough to
click on these links. Then there are the "updates" to show up as if
they are real when in fact they are viruses, Trojans, and worms.
Popular of late is: The e-mail server will be down for a couple of
days, please click on the link to update your file so we can forward
your e-mail during the outage. Of course there were the Microsoft
Security updates where you clicked on a link that didn't go to the MS
site.

As far as money, there are the "We are making changes and need to
update your e-bay account (quite a number of businesses have been
listed). It has you click on a link and it *appears* as if you have
been taken to the proper site where they ask for your account name and
have your log in. Of course while at it you have to update your credit
card information as well.

"Some" viruses/worms/Trojans are quite sophisticated and even "call
home" to check the payload for the day, or week, or what ever. Some
"morph" or evolve. Some are capable of running as soon as you open
the mail and some e-mail will load information from malicious sites,
which is a good reason for not using HTML e-mail. Macros can make a
mess. Visual basic which is part of MS office apps can do virtually
anything on your machine.

Some can search your machine looking for account and financial
information, credit card numbers, SS#, ... and so on..
Some leave a keystroke logger which can be checked later for account
names and pass words.

I can't imagine not having virus protection AND a fire wall. I've set
here and watched a probe check all the ports on the machine and when
it couldn't get in it started over. OTOH no machine is invulnerable
when it's hooked to the net.

In one year I received over 250 viruses and worms. Although I haven't
received many in a long time, I received 5 yesterday in half an hour.
These are viruses that made it past the ISPs checking.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.comRoger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com