Good Viruses?

[mattyflynn]

I remember reading somewhere that early viruses were designed to do maintenance across networks.

After doing a Google search i found this page

http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/vtgood.htm

By definition, viruses do not have to do something bad. An early (and current) virus researcher, Fred Cohen, has argued that good computer viruses are a serious possibility.

My question is have there been any viruses designed in recent years to do good? Or are they mostly malicious?

[disc0rd]

I think virii have such a terrible stigma over the past few years, that very few people that write virii nowadays have any good intentions. Although, correct me if I'm wrong you might consider that Symantec, McAfee, and all the other anti-virus software companies do a sort of "good-virii" in their anti-viral fixes.

[MrLinus]

IIRC, there was one that came out of the Kazaa network (depending on which side of the fence you sit on that one). It was designed to target Kazaa users who downloaded "pr0n" I believe and was meant as a way to deal with Kazaa users by preventing them from actually sharing software. (I believe it was Benjamin but not sure).

I don't know if we'll ever truly see a "good virus" most because of ethical issues and privacy issues. Few people like legit software checking up on them without letting them know, let alone a virus. Which you'd have even less control over.

[nihil]

The answer is "no" :)

Viruses infect, and as MsMittens rightly points out, you have no control. I think the confusion might be with the early development of remote management and central software distribution tools? There are similarities in behaviour, the main difference is the ability to specifically target.

I will admit that I did once steal some virus code and had it amended to do a software distribution for me...........It worked just fine, because a virus is just a proggie at the end of the day? I do not think I shall get sued for the plagiarism :D

Just a couple of thoughts

Cheers

[mark_boyle2002]

I consider that Nachi was a virus with good intentions.

It was ment to go onto the PC of Users who were ignorant of software updates and update the same for them.

Unfortunately the wild version of nachi was not very well written and caused alot of undesired traffic.

I believe its author had good intentions though.

[GrApHiCTrOn]

I have to agree with Mark but like the old saying says, Don't do good things that look like bad things.

[double_negative]

i would like to add something to what mark said, i heard way---- back when that a virus writer made a virus that was really ****ed up windows and a(rival) virus writer wrote a virus that was suppose to uninstall the other one however it was very unstable so despite good intentions it caused bad things to happen

[nihil]

In reply to double_negative's comment. I have certainly come across viruses that searched for other viruses and disabled them first. I believe that this was only to give them (the new virus) "a clear shot at the target"

I also seem to recall viruses being released as "cures" for other viruses (social engineering). Yes, they got rid of the virus, and went on to infect you themselves. A classic example of the "trojan horse"?

Mark has a good point with the Nachi virus, it probably was well intentioned. I also suspect that it "escaped" from the environment that it was intended and written to run in. This could be how it "got out of hand" and caused the traffic problems?


Cheers

[mark_boyle2002]

She swallowed a spider to catch the fly. !!! so to speak.

I believe that some virii (ones not written by script kiddies)
can be used for good. I mean some of the code I have written to perform administration tasks and bypass certain aspects of security which are unrequired but cannot be disabled in normal circumstance could be classed as virii.

[slarty]

Even the "good" viruses which are specifically designed to remove others and have no deliberate bad effects of their own, can still do damage.

Because these viruses, by the act of spreading itself, can cause denial of service attacks. Some are written incorrectly and will crash programs.

Or, suppose there is a good virus with absolutely no side effects, who's to say that it won't cause problems to some as yet unreleased program, for instance, a future version of M$ Windows which it causes to crash?

These are programs which spread in an uncontrolled fashion, cannot be easily uninstalled, and have no support programme in place - so they are bound to cause problems somewhere.

I am always skeptical of releasing any executable, even if I release a totally benign program with good intentions and no virus-like ability, it usually causes some problem for someone somewhere. Luckily, because I will be in contact with the users, I will be able to create a fix or a work-around for any problems they encounter. Unfortunately virus writers do not have this option.

Then there is always the danger, that some other, less able virus writer will take an otherwise perfectly benign virus and modify the program to add his own damaging payload.

Slarty

[Maestr0]

Fred Cohen author of "Computer Viruses: Theory and Experiments" who pioneered ideas in virus propagation and is known for the positive virus(aka compression virus),Cohen's Contradictory Virus,and Cohen's Evolutionary Virus. Cohen began his experiments in 1983 on a VAX 11/750 running UNIX.

"We define a computer virus as a program that can infect other programs by modifying them to include a slightly altered copy of itself. A virus can spread throughout a computer system or network using the authorizations of every user to infect their programs. Every program that is infected can also act as a virus and thus the infection grows."
-Fred Cohen


Basically nothing says they have to be bad, but good viruses only appear on paper not in practice.

-Maestr0

[bpiedlow]

IF M$ ever has their way with the world, meaning if one day everyone is running a M$ O/S and only running current M$ software on them, then there could be a good virus...

But since currently people run varied O/S's and run many various programs on them, it would be near impossible to write a single program with viruss like attributes that wouldn't cause harm to someone, somewhere if infected.

So currently no...

While at the same time, I do agree Nachii would be the closest thing to a 'good' one that has come out recently. As it 'seemed' to have no negative intentions and only caused damage due to its method of replication/deployment - which if it wasn't designed to use semi-current mass-deployment methods and also added in code to remove itself after execution, it would probably of been completely benign...

RRP

[enigma42]

there was code green. it it was made inorder to repair and patch computers infected by code red or vulnerable systems. it had good intentions but was blasted for causing extra internet trafic.

[Tiger Shark]

Mark et al:

I believe its author had good intentions though

Yes, the intentions are there..... But the pre-planning, dare I say "high intellect", wasn't!

MSBlast was a fast moving worm that would infect possibly hundreds of machines per hour. But it's total download after the initial infection was a mere 7kb, IIRC. So what did they do? they created a more aggressive worm to hunt down vulnerable machines and patch them.... Good intent.... Dumb execution...... The patch is 1.4MB.... Thats a 20,000 times increase in network usage...... All together now...... "DoS".....

If the patch was 10k or even 20k I could see the logic..... But 1.4MB was plain dumb IMO.....

If you are going to have good intentions take an IQ test first - Course that'll thin out the ranks of politicians too.... Oh well..... :cool:

[todaraba]

As an anti-online virgin (first post), be gentle.

If your machine can be compromised by someone else's code, you're "owned." If the code is "supposed" to have a good effect but you didn't actively choose to permit the code onto your system, this is still bad.

Windows update? Fine. Even automated, this is acceptable.
Other automatic software updates? If you set them up, great.
Other people's choices? You're owned, and sooner or later you're not going to like it.

[skiddieleet]

Originally posted here (http://www.AntiOnline.com/showthread.php?threadid=#post) by todaraba
As an anti-online virgin (first post), be gentle.

If your machine can be compromised by someone else's code, you're "owned." If the code is "supposed" to have a good effect but you didn't actively choose to permit the code onto your system, this is still bad.

Windows update? Fine. Even automated, this is acceptable.
Other automatic software updates? If you set them up, great.
Other people's choices? You're owned, and sooner or later you're not going to like it.
So how was your first post(referring to the virgin comment)lol. Not bad for your first time. Welcome to AO todaraba!

[romanticcowboy]

Originally posted here (http://www.AntiOnline.com/showthread.php?threadid=250823#post684176) by slarty
Even the "good" viruses which are specifically designed to remove others and have no deliberate bad effects of their own, can still do damage.

Because these viruses, by the act of spreading itself, can cause denial of service attacks. Some are written incorrectly and will crash programs.

Or, suppose there is a good virus with absolutely no side effects, who's to say that it won't cause problems to some as yet unreleased program, for instance, a future version of M$ Windows which it causes to crash?

These are programs which spread in an uncontrolled fashion, cannot be easily uninstalled, and have no support programme in place - so they are bound to cause problems somewhere.

I am always skeptical of releasing any executable, even if I release a totally benign program with good intentions and no virus-like ability, it usually causes some problem for someone somewhere. Luckily, because I will be in contact with the users, I will be able to create a fix or a work-around for any problems they encounter. Unfortunately virus writers do not have this option.

Then there is always the danger, that some other, less able virus writer will take an otherwise perfectly benign virus and modify the program to add his own damaging payload.

Slarty
i agree with the above ,the main point i want to make in htis is,. no matter if you have the same software i.e. operating system,antivirus,ect as the computer the virus is written for ,each computer is diffrent ,diffrent configurations ,inviroments where the virus is is installed example : having conflicting programs running at the time of installation .a computer can have the same software ,hardware ,ect . good viruses written with good intentions in opinion do more harm than good

[ShagDevil]

I see alot of good points being made in this thread and it led me to do a little researching for myself. After putzing around awhile, I found this article which really goes into the breakdown of Technical reasons both for and against 'beneficial viruses'.
It's a bit much to read but I'm thinking it's relevent to the current debate. Anyways, I hope you guys like this link.
http://www.virusbtn.com/old/OtherPapers/GoodVir/

Note: Maestr0, cool thing about this article is it uses many references from Fred Cohen :D.