Let us first answer the main question. Who benefits from it? Why have computers, networks, and mobile phones become carriers of not only useful information, but also a “habitat” for different malicious programs? It is not difficult to answer this question. All (or almost all) inventions, mass use technologies have, sooner or later, become a tool of hooligans, swindlers, blackmailers and other criminals. As soon as there is an opportunity to misuse something, somebody will definitely find new technologies and use them in a way that was not intended by the inventors, but in an altogether different way — for their own interests or to assert themselves to the detriment of others. Unfortunately, computers, mobile phones, computer and mobile networks have not escaped this fate. As soon as these technologies started being used by the masses, the bad guys stepped in. However, the criminalization of these innovations was a gradual process.
Computer vandalism
Petty theft
Cybercrime
“Grey” business
Computer vandalism
In the past the majority of viruses and Trojans were created by students who had just mastered a programming language and wanted to try it out, but failed to find a better platform for their skills. Up to present time writers such viruses were seeking only one thing - to raise self-esteem. Fortunately, a large part of such viruses have not been distributed (by their authors) and shortly viruses “died away” together with the storage disks or authors of viruses sent them only to anti-virus companies with a note that the virus would not be further transferred.
The second group viruses-writers also includes young people (often — students), who have not yet fully mastered the art of programming. Inferiority complex is the only reason prompting them to write viruses, which is compensated by computer hooliganism. Such “craftsmen” often produce primitive viruses with numerous mistakes (the so-called “student viruses”). Life of such virus-writers has become much simpler with the development of Internet and emergence of numerous websites training how to write a computer virus. Web-resources of this kind give detailed recommendations on how to intrude into the system, conceal from anti-virus programs and offer ways of further distribution of a virus. Often ready original texts are provided, which require only minimal “author” changes and compilation as recommended.
When older and more experienced, many virus-writers fall into the third and most dangerous group, creating professional viruses and lets them out to the world. These elaborate and smoothly running programs are created by professionals, not infrequently very talented programmers. These viruses often intrude into data system domains in very unusual ways, use mistakes of security systems of operating environments’, social engineering and other tricks.
The fourth group of malware writers is very special— “researchers”, rather shrewd programmers who invent new methods of infecting, concealing and resistance to anti-viruses etc. They also invent ways of intrusion into new operational systems. These programmers create viruses not for the sake of viruses themselves, but rather to research the potential of “computer fauna” — they produce the so-called “connectional viruses” (Proof of Concept — PoC). Often their authors do not spread these creations, but actively promote their ideas via numerous Internet resources, devoted to the creation of viruses. The danger of such “research viruses” is also very high — when falling among the third groups of “professionals”, new viruses where these ideas are revealed emerge in no time.
“Traditional” viruses created by people mentioned above are still emerging - hooligan teenagers who become adults are constantly replaced by the new generations (of teenagers). Interestingly enough, recently “hooligan viruses” have become less and less relevant — except when malicious programs evoke global network and e-mail epidemics. New viruses of “traditional“ type are considerably decreasing in number — 2005-2006 faced a dramatic decrease in their number as compared to mid and late 1990. There are several possible reasons why students are not as interested to creating viruses.
It was a lot easier to create viruses for MS-DOS in the 1990-s than for the more complex Windows.
Special computer-related articles were introduced to legislation of many countries and arrests of virus writers were widely covered by the press, which definitely cooled students’ interest to viruses.
Moreover, they found a new way to show their worth — network games. Most probably, modern games shifted the interest and attracted computerized young people.
Thus, currently the share of “traditional” hooligan viruses and Trojans is no more than 5% of all programs registered in anti-virus databases. The remaining 95% are much more dangerous than simply viruses. They are created for the following purposes.
