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I have heard that Virtual Basic and other versions of Basic and C/C++ are popular for creating virus's or other programs for illegal purposes. Has anyone thought of using a another language that gives the programmer more control (I think at least; dont hold me to it) such as using the assembler language?
In one word: yes
Have a look for the Magistr virus.........couple of years old now...or more...but a good example of quality virus code, as opposed to social engineering?
Cheers
Assembler is a powerful language to create small, optimized, and fast viruses.
I frighten more a basic but coded in assembler virus than the last fashion worm. Assembly coders know what they do, and they do it generally with style.
haha, you all forget MOST of the DOS based virii were written in ASM because it manipulated directly with the machine to seriously **** things up. For a detailed tutorial and insight to the ASM virus writing techinique, please look at the following link:
http://www.sirkussystem.com/virus.html
Here, you will find the tutorials by authors of many well known virii such as Ear and the Dark Avenger virus among many others. One prerequisite is you need to know assember language to understand how they work such as interrupts, flags, the stack, registers and memory locations. A good place to start on knowing how to do this is called The Art Of Assembly which has a terrific 16 bit course on assembly:
http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/Page_asm/0_Page_asm.html
Next, you may want to check out 40Hex e-zine that has more techniques on the world of virii and other stuff. This is way old, but is great for historical and educational purposes. As for newer virii written in HLA, C/C++ and other languages, you may want to search google, FTP servers or other places that are known for virii such as NNTP or KaZaA.
Good luck
Yes, Assembly Virii are popular. I bought The Giant Black Book of Virus Programming by.. that guy... ugh, forget his name, anyway... excellent book, tells you how to write Virii ONLY using Assembler. It's .. well, hard for a C programmer to learn the structure of ASM, but it sure can make a killer virus. He gives you some pretty nifty ideas of what you can do by hijacking system calls, for instance every time you hit a key, make your monitor change colours or something.
Very cool.
There's a version of the book up on the web in PDF format, it's the Tiny Black Book of Virus Programming or something like that, it's free I believe. It's basically most of the stuff from the big book, minus the appendixes and fun tidbits. It's a great read too.
Enjoy,
Tigwyk
A lot of the replying antionline members are talking about the existance of books on programming virus's and assembler code books. Are these books possible to find on amazon.com? (I have been looking but I have only been able to find books to teach beginners how to program so I might have missed it.)
I would check out barnes and noble www.barnesandnoble.com they have a pretty good selection of books on the Assembly language But for virus writing I doubt there are any books in the stores that will teach you how.