Pacman Viruses, a issue to be dealt with?

[unit321]

Pacman isnt the technical term, i dont know what it, but heres what im talking about. Im talkking about a `virus` that circulates for the SOLE purpose of destroying a specific virus probably borrowing the code from that virus. A few questions i have:
1. Is this legal?
2. is this morally wrong?
3. in a US court of law would you be aquitted etc. because of good will?

it seems like a good, and fairly easy way to kill viruses out in the wild. Does anybody know of anybody who makes these? What is the realm of possibilities I am looking at here?\ What are the possibilities of success?\could this be applied in a buisness environment? For simple vbs scripts you could take the replicating code and then add the removal code, just packing on a removal utility, or creating a simple one.

[kryptonic]

hmmm...i came actross a trojan a few weeks ago where the file name was pacman.exe. if you want the link for the trojan so you can play with it let me know its pretty cool just pm me.

[unit321]

thats not quite what i was talking about......... ive got access to plenty of viruses allready thanks. Is pacman a replicating virus? if so my idea could be but into practice. after some reverse engineering the code could be extracted and modded

[spamdies]

1 it would not be legal because it would be spreading by it self.
2 it would be morally wrong because it would infiltrate systems without consent.
3 who knows what a court would do. but probly no.

[LeeBkr311]

Sounds too much like 'Skynet' for my liking!

[Und3ertak3r]

Your asking about an Anti-Virus Virus..
check out Nachi/Welchia worms I am sure there are others..
this one was originaly the anti-MSblast worm...

Basicly it is stil malware.. It is still a criminal act .. and your chances in court are about the same as the original virus writer

2. is this morally wrong?

now this depends on your morals..
Socialy.. it is wrong.. that is why it is not legal..

[the_JinX]

There has been a virus like that, written by a nice belgian girl (Gigabyte)..

a virus designed to attack a version of the already-existing Yaha virus

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-981336.html

[unit321]

on the moral prespective, it would be intruding on peoples systems, but most likely they would have to execute an attachment through email or other forms, otherwise a hole in the OS could be exploited creating a hacking issue. Now, what would be the problem, its only helping people, and its not `violating security and privacy` because it wont be recording or reporting anything. Also, maybe it could spread through p2p networks etc. taking on attributes of other files. Would you be pissed off if a `virus` got rid of a virus on your computer? if you would you should patch your system and not open attachments you are not sure about. wouldnt it have been nice if somebody destroyed melissa in its process so it didnt become such a pandemic? also, if it were to spread not through email but by tcp/ip remote connections, could it be equipped with a remote scanner to scan for the virus before it infects the system? maybe utilize nmap to scan for vulns, then have programmed responses and ways to get in through those vulns, then you would be reverse engineering of copyrighted content (maybe) and copyright infringement (maybe).

[TheSpecialist]

its only helping people, and its not `violating security and privacy` because it wont be recording or reporting anything.

Actually thats not true... even if it did do alot of good, its still useing processing and/or network connections and not to mention it still propogates otherwise it wouldn't even be considered a virus or worm.

Welchia was not helpfull to anyone at all. I've removed this from several people's computers and this worm does not get rid of the backdoors that MSblaster left behind and its method of scanning caused internet connections to crawl on its knees. Also if you look at yahasux... gigabyte says it all, you have a worm which is then replaced with yahasux. I also beleave there was some *cough *cough "accidental flaws" with yahasux which caused some problems. It still spread itself to other users. That ain't removal. This is niether good or really that bad... just something else for the mindless masses out there.

Malware effecting other malware is nothing new either... there have been many occasions of *exe and *com appending virii which had the ability to remove another virus to further place itself on the thrown or show another Author who's boss sort of speak. Another thing is there is always the possability that they could attach themselves to each other without the author or user's initial intent of this happening. And the thing about over-writers is it doesn't really leave much behind, it just replicates. If another piece of malware is in its wake then it'll just get overwritten like everything else.