The intellectual challenge

From member why do people play online games, why do people do crosswords or play chess it’s the element of competition, pitting your wits and skill against that of others. It's a competition to see who can write the best virus, which can beat the antivirus companies, who can beat Microsoft's developers. I suspect the vast majority of virus writers are male, because competitiveness is a predominantly (but certainly not exclusively) male trait. It's not necessarily about being malicious, not always about money.


It’s sometimes about winning, about challenging the rest of the world and beating them. It's the cyber age version of graffiti, the Internet equivalent of the adolescent challenging the mature and making waves, Extortion From member Dixon: Let's not leave out plain old-fashioned extortion, as with Vendor /Antivirus2009/Antivirus360. "You're infected! Give us sixty bucks and we'll fix it!"Resume material from member Oz Media: I knew a few guys in the early 90s who wrote viruses simply to get noticed as capable programmers.


Offering up a virus, then creating a removal tool and sending it to major players (F-protect, Computer Associates, Kasper sky, etc.) put them on the map as code savvy. In fact, I remember a time when that was the key focus behind writing viruses and exploiting code -- to show off your talents compared to existing engineers. Who do you think major antivirus companies hire to write removal tools, the same criminals who exploit systems, of course.


Also, if a company wouldn't hire them as programmers, they'd hack the software and send the exploit details to the engineers, offering to fix it for $$$$. Then they'd go to a competitor and show them the competition's weaknesses and use THAT to get work with the competitor. Think of Stuart from MAD TV, "Look what I can do!" NOTE: I said I knew them, I didn't say they were friends.