DecimatoR
40hex [9]
December 1992
1991: The virus scene was almost nonexistent. A handful of virus boards populated the earth, the biggest being the Virus Exchange in Bulgaria. In the US, only a very few boards had viruses.. and those which did all had less than 100. If you had 80 viruses back then, you were God. Today, just one year later, if you have less than 800 you're lame. Viruses are everywhere. Unfortunately, almost none of them are original. They're all hacks of hacks of hacks of hacks, or else all cranked out by MPC or VCL, the 2 virus generation programs in mass distribution. No one (save a few) writes original code anymore. The recent flood of lame viruses all prove that. MPC and VCL account for over half of the "new" viruses released each day - and all the viruses generated by those programs are scannable before they even get compiled. So why do people keep using the programs? Why create 30 viruses which all do the same thing, except maybe on a different day, or using a different text string? Why? I'll tell you why. Because the kids using MPC and VCL are basically talentless programmers who think it's cool to stick their name in a program and pass it around. They believe they'll achieve god-like fame in the underground by creating these little clones and changing a few bytes. Are these people cool? Hardly. It takes true talent to create a virus. It takes brains and skill to write a virus which will work as planned, avoid detection, and propagate itself. The authors of MPC and VCL are very talented programmers. Unfortunately, the users of their programs are just the opposite. Real virus programmers have a desire to learn assembler - it's a test of their skill and ability. The users of MPC and VCL don't have that desire. They only have a desire for recognition - and seeing their name in a virus is a massive ego trip for them. Why? They did nothing that any Joe Blow couldn't have done using a code generator. If they really want to prove how cool they are, let them write a damn virus generation program and release it. That alone show the world their skill and ability. As for using the program, well, I'm more impressed with a nicely formatted term paper using WordPerfect than I am with viruses created using MPC and VCL. If you're one of the lame idiots who uses MPC or VCL for "writing" viruses, then listen up - those programs were written for 2 reasons - to prove the programmer could write such a thing, and to be used as a learning tool for future virus writers - not to be abused the way they currently are. Stop acting lame and actually create an original virus for once, people! And if you find that's impossible, then get the hell out of the scene and let the people who can program do it!