10/17 Some iPods shipped w/ a Windows Virus:
http://www.apple.com/support/windowsvirus
\- why dont more viruses delete massive amounts of data?
it seems like if the virus writers wanted to hurt msft
that what they should do in addition to spreading.
it seems like viruses are still in the realm of annoying
rather than fatal. is there some techical reason they
cant do more permanent damage? [i understand thaty cant
instantly kill the host, as that will greatly reduce the
spread rate].
\_ one day they will take your data and you'll have
to pay Russians to get it back.
\_ Probably because most of these are all about tagging to get
their name out there in the el8 hax0r community to announce
their m@d sk1llz than really about anything truly malicious.
We have spyware for that now.
\_ sort of like the reason real viruses aren't more lethal .. they
kill off the host and can't spread any more.
\- yes i understand that is often the case but you would think
there would be at least a few that did massive damage. or
somebody would tweak the original to do a if p < .05 then
rm -rf /. especially when you consider how many people dont
like msft. making bill gates = borg tshirts doesnt hurt msft
but fear and trembling on the part of people running windows
might.
\_ There have been viruses which delete files; they don't
propagate very well, because IT folks are more aggressive
about finding and cleaning them. -tom
\_ IT folks don't find them until users complain, while
cleaning them at most places usually involves
Symantec's Ghost. Nuke it from orbit. It's the
only way to be sure.
\_ The best answer I've heard to this question is that the
purpose is not to destroy the host or to delete info, but
to gain remote access to the host and use its bandwidth
either for downloading software or for use in ddos attacks.
Deleteing data would give away the covert nature of the
infection and would make is more likely that the virus
would be removed before the author could make use of the
infected host.
\- i am not expressing surprise that most viruses arent
more destructive but that so few are. do you know of
anybody who lost everything that was not backed up
after a virus infection? i dont think most viruses
today give somedy a "covert channel" to control the
host or really do much purposeful things other than
propagage themselves [there are some that do ddoses,
but that is still the minority] ... again, look on
slashdot or in other parts of dweebworld and there are
so many people who hate msft. there are also so many
viruses. i'm ust surprised these two group have not
intersected to produce a really destructive virus ...
most of these viruses punish some comobination of
the owner of the computer, possible their IT slaves,
if in some institution with an IT staff ... but dont really
punish msft. of course it is possible this is common
among people running bootlegged OSes which are not managed
by "it staff" [say te random asian windoes pirate user]
but we dont hear about it much.
\_ Then I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but you may not know
much about viruses. Botnets for hire (spam, DDoS for
blackmail, mainly) are a pretty big "industry", all
things considered. Very few skilled virus authors are
your prototypical 13 year old "I H8 TEH M1CROSUX"
slashdot bandwagon dweeb nowadays. Most viruses/trojans
have a fairly pragmatic purpose, and while in a lot of
cases it's just to propagate and make a point (whee look
at me! I'm cool!) those, with a few notable exceptions,
tend to be among the large mass of badly written, easily
caught ones. There's some really technically interesting
stuff floating around that does stuff like use Windows ADS
for payload storage, much of which spreads fairly
discreetly and doesn't do exactly the kind of destructive
shit that might cause grandma to install Symantec. -John
\- this may be true now, but viruses have quite a long
history and these functional one are a relatively
recent phenomena ... certainly viruses changed in
the era of permanently and by default networked
windows boxes. also i also [and i could be wrong
here] modifying a virus is probably much simpler
than writing from scratch so the number of people willing
and able to "mutate" one into an rm-rf virus seems
fairly large. so do you know of a single
person who had his computer "deleted" by a virus?
[i mean deliberate erasure or corruption of disk ...
not accidentally hosing things trying to remove it].
again my whole point is my suprise about threasholds.
like there have been DDOSes against msft, but I'm
surprised there have not been more or more clever
anti-msft DDOSes.
\_ Because people with real technical skills have better
things to do than hate microsoft much less write
malicious code to damage windows machines.
\_ Yes, I know of quite a few who have had significant
amounts of data wiped by fairly primitive viruses
as a big fat bronx cheer for failing to take even
basic security measures. And what the above poster
said. There are extremely skilled and vicious DDoS
attacks (e.g. against gambling sites during large
sports events for blackmail purposes) using botnets
for hire. There's no money to be made out of hitting
MSFT. -John |
http://csua.com/feed/