Malicious Mobile Code

Malicious Code-Writing Subculture

The television idea of an isolated hacker sitting alone in a room, surrounded by Cheetos™ and empty Dr. Pepper™ cans in front of the midnight glow of a computer screen is a bit outdated. Well, at least the isolated part. Hackers today are more often adolescents and young adults with an entire cyber support system. They hang out in Internet chat rooms, newsgroups, and mailing lists, ingesting anything they can learn about their computer interests. They are out to learn everything they can about stretching their own abilities and their computer’s abilities, while only a few individuals mean real harm. Twenty years ago it might have been hard for a hacker to name a dozen people who shared their same interest. Today, there are thousands of online resources, and the hacker can name a dozen people in his school who like to hack.

Inside the Malicious Hacker’s Mind

Why do people write malicious programs? Richard Skrenta was a ninth grader when he wrote the first PC virus, Cloner, in 1981. Now, a CEO for an impressive Internet company, his virus-writing days have been over for nearly 20 years. I asked him what motivated him to write a computer virus? Here’s what he said:

I had played a trick on a classmate by altering a disk with a hot new pirated game to self destruct after a few boots. I gave him the disk, which he eagerly accepted, and he got to play [it] a few times before my booby trap sprung and the game erased itself. I enjoyed the success of this ...