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i saw some posts agaisnt virus programming on thsi baord, but i must say i disagree. virus programming is actually very interesting, but theres not much on it anymore. im not for those idiots who make destructive virii, but just viruses that stay alive, by spreading through systems, an dhiding themselves.

No, useful programming is interesting. There is plenty of scope to write useful, non-destructive, interesting code without writing a virus.

you can find my articles in VLAD magazines, IRmag, the last nuke info journal didnt get released so none of my stuf in that. there is also other articles + tutorials around on it by me and my mates.

you can find it on my site

some of my friends and I have written worms/viruses in VBS pretty easaly. of course, NONE of them are destructive and we comment out code that inhibits them from spreading accedently. I am facentaed by viruses and would like to learn how to make them for the sake of having the knowlage.

The only "virus" I have ever been interested in is the hypothetical one that William Gibson. The theory in some of his work is that a virus propagated, gaining something like self-awareness, and after it crashed the net, it became the basis for AI and advanced ICE. Something like that, anyway.

I discussed with a Perlmonger friend creating a bundle with a nice script header on it that would propagate itself through out a bunch of free-host sites that allowed ftp access and/or CGI/Perl scripting/Java applications/applets. This script/bundle would behave as a neural net.

I like neural nets

The beauty part of the system would be that even if the bandwidth limit was exceeded, this emulates behavior of actual neurons, which after used for a time, lay dormant.

This is all based loosely on the theories of Chaotic Architecture by Dr. William L. Ditto, Georgia Technical Institute, School of Applied Chaos.

Of course, due to the legality issues of grabbing that much free web space from different sources, and the fact that such a project probably wouldn't garner me any money or grants, I never pursued it.

However, I believe the model is nice, as proof-of-concepts exist from P2P networks, SETI@home, and the recent parallel processing project in Canada (There's a slashdot article some time ago about the last).

While this could be construed as a "virus", I like to think of it as a self-propagating neural net/cluster. There is clustering software that does something similar, as well.

I have never made a virus. And never will...(unless it's to protect my computer.

I do belive that the [safe/i] and ethical development of viruses is the start of true AI, as viruses are the begging, or start of accual life. first you need a single strand of DNA to make eventually the most complex strands.

I've toyed with the idea of trying to code a virus that will infect anyone who hacks into my network... that's the only useful kind of virus IMO. Not quite sure how to go about it...

*gets out the mIRC slap command and slaps df around for having cracks on his website*

*puts the mIRC slap command back away for later use on IRC*

K.J.

[glow=BLUE,2,300]DF HAS CRACKS? ON HIS WEB SITE?[/glow]

its all old stuff that dates back to dos 4/5/6 days... like really old stuff!

Ok..... :-\

oh shoot! i completley forget i created this thread!
anyways...

No, useful programming is interesting. There is plenty of scope to write useful, non-destructive, interesting code without writing a virus.

not really true at all tim. graphics programming is useful, and i mean the kind where you put all the correct values into the vid card registers, and w/o it, graphics programming would be impossible, because it has to be done soone ror later. but its one of the most boring things out there. virii are very interesting. ive never actually written one, just read on them, and thought about writing them, but when i got into it, i didnt know asm. anyways, ive gotten thsi idea, of engineering one, that would have a bit of code that when first run, determines some mask value, to mask the virus code to protect it, but the first time its run, this piece of code woudl be overwritten, so itd be never run again. this would make the virus different on every comp, and hide it very well. just a theory, but soon enough when im better with assembler, im gonna try it out. and tom, virii wont protect your comp, cuz their sole purpose is to survive. Mark Ludwig thinks that they are the start of AI, because they grow and evolve to survive. this obscure branch of computer science is one of my favorite. its ashame its gotten such a bad rap by destructive virii

Well, it's a dangerous and tricky field. If you release a virus into the wild, you become a criminal. If you release a virus into a closed-system, like a proxy or a cluster (or whatever network you're using as a testing ground), its performance won't be realistically measured. Also, it is very easy to get financing to STOP virii, but not easy at all to get financing to create better, stronger, faster virii, regardless of the goals of the project.

If you want to play with viruses, then maybe you should try to get a job with SARC or AVERT.

Seriously, there are legitimate reasons for creating viruses in the virus testing labs, but most of them have to do with identiying exploits so that they can be fixed, or predicting the possible designs of new wild viruses so that anti-virus programs can be ready before an outbreak occurs. It's a job that carries risks - last summer, for example, an FBI virus lab accidentally re-released a copy of a wild virus accidentally while testing it - but it if that's what you're interested in, I'd call that the way to go.

im onyl 16. dont have a college degree. imjust a hobbyist