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Thread: Computer virus creators rarely face jail

  1. #1
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    Computer virus creators rarely face jail

    -- Although nearly 63,000 viruses have rolled through the Internet, causing an estimated $65 billion in damage, criminal prosecutions have been few, penalties light and just a handful of people have gone to prison for spreading the destructive bugs.--

    To read more http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/interne....ap/index.html

  2. #2
    They should do some time because they have either written or modified the virus that has caused companies and people data loss,down time and loss of revenue. paying a fine is only half of it the other half should be sitting in a jail cell thinking about what damage they have caused and hopefully change their ways.

  3. #3
    That kind of power is hard to just throw away and walk away from.

    The pirates and pirated goods are hard to give up for many because when you get things for free, why buy it? Some that come to mind are some people I know that have hundreds of pirated programs they never use, but have them anyway.

    The same goes for defacing. It's like a drug. You get into it and it's very difficult to shake it off. I have personally talked with former defacers that simply cannot help but to still dabble in it or simply fall full swing into it again. I find it sad, but I also understand the compulsion.

    The same is true for virii. With a programming language you have a lot of power and there lies a certain responsibility not to abuse that power. With assembler, you have total control over every aspect of your computer right down to where an instruction will go in a register to a location on memory. That kind of power is intoxicating and very, very difficult to give up.

    Will jail time change minds? I doubt it. It takes the person to actually look within themselves to make a positive change and use that knowledge for something useful, which unfortunatley does not always happen.

    Lastly, it is difficult to find the origin of a virus, and even tougher to find a savvy enough jury to convict or not convict.

  4. #4
    Senior Member DeadAddict's Avatar
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    That is very true but I do believe that doing some time will hopefully change their ways to do postive things instead of creating problems that do nothing but waste peoples valuable time and resources.

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    I agree with all of you on all the points made but there is another thing to consider. Not all writers are trying to do something inherently malicious. Consider the writer of "Welchia" who was really trying to eliminate the "Blaster" worm or Robert Morris who's program was intended to shut-down stale processes on his internal network. In _some_ cases the writer intended no harm (very hard to subjectively show) and was just as shocked when the news broke about their program taking networks down.

    I think something should be done for those writing malware strictly for the sake of wreaking havoc but how do you distinguish between the two?
    Where\'s the ka-booom?
    There was supposed to be an earth-shattering ka-booom!

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    I agree with Roadkill.

    How do you prove intent? Don't get me wrong, worm writer's (even if they mod'ed an existing worm) need to see the consequences of their actions, but how?

    It is a very delicate topic IMHO....

    R.

  7. #7
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    The only way that comes to mind is to either look over the source code or test it out on a closed network that is not connected to the internet and view the results. That should be enough to make a judgement on which side the code belongs to. and I do agree with you that a very few virus writer's don't have a malicious intent to damage other peoples data their curiosity gets the best of them.

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    Would the source code necessarliy prove what hat the writer is wearing? There are many who would say the Morris was trying to knock out the internet but he maintains he was just writing a tape worm to clear his network of a problem.

    The LoveLetter author swears (don't they all) that he wrote the worm because he was angry with a girlfriend but he only meant it for his school network (yeah - right!).

    My point - albeit as a devil's advocate - is that even looking at the source may not always be conclusive. Things like code red are fairly obvious since it showed intent to run a DDoS on the whitehouse network.
    Where\'s the ka-booom?
    There was supposed to be an earth-shattering ka-booom!

  9. #9
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    the sad thing is most virii's these days are 85% script kiddies. And their not all that dum. Vary rarely does a MAJOR virii creator get caught(not including the fat kid from blaster ) so everyone just makes "virii 's and walks". ah who cares a network down crashes some inoccent guys PC who cares right? and thats all they think.........

    juts my opinion.......



    CYPHERDIAS

  10. #10
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    I think if the payload is destructive to the point where it deletes data and does a DoS on servers then it should be a black hat (I do know that all black hats are not out to destroy data or do DoS attacks) If the virus is just being a pain in the ass as a example moving the mouse pointer icon around opening and shutting the cd tray just for laughs and after awhile it tells you how to remove it from the system then it should be considered a grey or white hat.And creating a virus for windows has become so easy now that it requires no programming skill to make one Just point cllick and type in a few words and bam new virus. now for linux and freebsd you do have to know programing language.

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