Computer Viruses In This Modern Age ----------------------------------- alcopaul/brigada ocho 06/07/2014 Intro ----- I came into the virus scene with an idea of creating viruses as a hobby. And I was indoctrinated to think that a virus must infect an executable and transmit itself from there to other executables by executing it. That's it. It's the textbook definition of a virus, both in computer sense and biological sense. But now, with the securities implemented in the modern OS's, creating a virus is now almost impossible. Plus the protection offered by modern anti-virus is sufficient to discover and eradicate them. Why? The formula is known. Piece of code inside executable that is able to pass on to other executable. That's it. Easy. But what I've learned from writing a prepending virus, that is writing a full executable that is able to infect other executable is that I can write a portable stand alone executable that is able to propagate fully by itself. And making it an executable, it becomes somewhat a fully independent cell that can spread. Sort of like a bacteria or a worm. But technically we call it still a virus. Ah semantics. Computer Viruses in this Day and Age ------------------------------------ There are a few coders left that writes a full fledged virus. hh86, JPanic still do them. But their creations is sort of like a homage to the old school MSDOS virus writers who lives in an age when executables are swapped by filesharers. Now adays, data files like pictures, videos, documents are shared. A few people like me attempted to target them but there is still have to be a legit data infection that must be introduced. Word macros are dead. And I never heard of virus writers attacking data files because still their mindset are still in the MSDOS days of executable infection. The things that we hear now are malwares that spread, which we can call virulent, plus the payload, like key-ing keystrokes to steal your cash in an online bank or get your credit card info, or spy on you and blackmail you afterwards. Sinister purposes, in short. That's what people call virus nowadays. Level Up -------- We've heard of Stuxnet. It spread on the net to avoid origin detection and infected Iran's nuclear scientists USB sticks. Then the payload is to compromise the nuclear reactors of Iran to the point of their destruction. See, computer viruses can be used to affect the vital infrastructures of the world. We can see this pattern on SPTH's DNA replication from computer to the biological world. Say a virus that piggy backs a bacterial DNA infects a database of individual DNA sequence, overwriting it with the bacterial DNA, and later the modified DNA sequence is actually synthesized. What if that DNA is very deadly? World wide catastrophy. A hypothetical scenario can also be made like a computer virus with a payload carrying the Pepsi formula/ratio infecting a Coca Cola plant and making the machines formulate the Pepsi ratio instead. Imagine Coke tasting like Pepsi. Horrible. Or a computer virus that can infect voting machines producing false election results. If this happens, the winning president could've orchestrated the cheating. Or a virus that spreads on the net and attempts to attack airport systems. Imagine how many planes will crash or collide with each other. Or a virus that infiltrates the military systems. Launching nukes and shit. Or imagine any scenario that can be set with computers in it. The formula is simple. Spread on the internet -> Directed Attack on the Payload. This will obfuscate the source of the attack. Outro ----- Computer viruses in this day and age. Infecting executables is a thing of the past.