As I See It: Infected

When you turn on your PC, if you happen to have Symantec‘s Norton AntiVirus scanning for unwelcome code segments, it will inform you that it can recognize 66,171 unique viruses. That’s as of March of this year, and the number gets bigger with each release. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that there are tens of thousands of pathetic, vindictive, cowardly, morally bankrupt, ethically vacuous, emotionally stunted individuals who chose to act out at the expense of others. But I am.

These aren’t stupid people, after all. In at least one area of their lives, they excel and strive for mastery. Nor is virus writing limited to alienated teens who a generation ago would have tortured ants and written naughty things on bathroom walls, but who now seek to assuage their unfocused rage through cyber vandalism. To be sure, such kids exist and some seek the companionship of other ethical infants, forming cyber gangs, with enigmatic-sounding names that exude self-importance. For the young, pushing the limits of mischief has predictable motivations: the search for kicks to alleviate boredom, the hunger for praise and peer approval, a desire for challenge, and one-upmanship as a method of proving self-worth.

But that doesn’t begin to account for more than 66,000 viruses.

Jo Twist, BBC News Online technology reporter, cites Sarah Gordon, computer virus and security guru, who affirms that “the kind of person who creates such disruption differs in age, income, location, social/peer interaction, educational level, likes, dislikes, and communication style.” Probably wears different underwear, too. So what does that tell us other than suggesting that virus writing is pervasive?

For one thing, it tells us that motivations have expanded to include financial gain. Spamming is a growth industry, and spammers are increasingly employing hackers and what Paul Wood, chief security analyst at MessageLabs, calls “the best-of-breed virus writers” to help them. Cyber crime is becoming organized. Over half of the e-mail traffic on the Internet is unsolicited, and that takes resources and management. (Many people would argue that half is optimistic. About 90 percent of the stuff that makes its way into my inbox is spam.) Regardless, spammers are competing against one another, as well as the law. When spammers aren’t selling drugs or penile enlargements, or offering to share millions of dollars of third-world booty, they are usurping resources. Twist cites the so-called SoBig F virus, “which turns a computer into a host to send out millions of spam e-mails, often without the owner’s knowledge.” Other cyber criminals use intrusive software to obtain confidential information from private computers for the purpose of identity theft.

Then there are people who are ideologically motivated. They hate the government or the Pentagon or corporations. They may be against the war or against organizations that are against the war. They may hate fascism or oppression or dictatorship or exploitation. They may be motivated by politics (one of our august political parties was recently caught hacking the computers of the other) or by a desire to undermine the political process (hacking automated voting machines comes to mind). Whatever their motivation, they engage in a private war against the object of their discontent. The Code Red worm, for example, was designed to, among other things, launch an attack on the White House Web server in an attempt to overwhelm it–a minor annoyance at best, but how often do you get to annoy the government?

Ideology may be closely linked to another motivation: commercial sabotage. Corporations are targeted in an effort to disrupt business as usual and cause financial losses. But they can also be targeted because they are perceived to be arrogant, and the perpetrator wishes to prove his superiority by humiliating his target. Microsoft is one such company. As soon as it releases a new product or operating system, there are thousands of code artists looking for ways to defeat it. Unfortunately, for millions of Windows users, the virus writers often succeed and Microsoft’s humiliation trickles down and disrupts its customers.

Companies may also be targeted by rivals, but the most likely perpetrators of commercial sabotage will be disgruntled employees. Apparently, casualties of the jobless recovery, displaced by layoffs, mergers, and rampant outsourcing, are voicing their displeasure by sabotaging the computers of their former employers. According to experts, revenge is the fastest growing reason for cyber crime. Sadly, injustice is seldom remedied by foolishness. Sabotage is a combination of desperation and stupidity by which perpetrators must cope with losing not only their jobs but also their self-respect.

Commercial espionage, a popular pastime of entrepreneurs who are unencumbered by ethics, also has received a boost from cyber thieves. Perhaps fittingly, most commercial espionage, not unlike legitimate IT work, is outsourced. Companies and governments alike, seeking advantage for themselves or their pet industries, contract with so-called information brokers or investigative agencies to steal specific information about a competitor’s ongoing projects. A cracker or a team of crackers are employed to ferret out the relevant information but, if their efforts prove unsuccessful, break-ins are not unheard of, nor is the practice of bribing key employees. Businesses located overseas are often targeted by a foreign intelligence service, and may therefore be reluctant to report incidents of espionage to their host country. For years, Europeans have complained that the National Security Agency’s British installation, Menwith Hill, provides commercial intelligence to American firms by capturing and passing on privileged communications.

And then there is my favorite explanation, offered, according to Twist, by British academics Andy Bissett and Geraldine Shipton of the University of Sheffield. I love academics because they live in a world of abstractions unencumbered by reality. Bissett and Shipton believe virus writers have both conscious and unconscious motivations. (There’s news!) And among the latter is something they call “non-specific malice.” Great! What are we to do with that? It’s tough enough to cure somebody of specific malice, but the free-floating variety may prove more elusive.

My guess is that some academic will receive several million dollars to study non-specific malice, and by the end of the study it will become a full-blown syndrome. Defense lawyers will love it. “No, your honor, my client is not an antisocial little maggot who enjoys anonymously destroying other people’s property; he’s suffering from NSM, Non-Specific Malice syndrome.”

Here’s your Prozac, son. Go and sin no more.

And while we’re on the subject of academics, a couple of them at Tulane University decided to study the psychological effects of being infected by computer viruses. But they call viruses “electronically transmitted diseases,” because academics aren’t allowed to use one word when three will do. In any event, they observed (are you ready?) “anxiety, frustration, and anger among those affected” by viral contagion or, should I say, those who have had the misfortune of communing with someone who purposely or inadvertently has passed on electronically transmitted diseases.

Whodathunkit? Alert the media!

Yes, there are a lot of folks out there who are frustrated and tired of dealing with an endless stream of electronic tantrums. The dilemma for the virus spawners is that, if you anger enough people over a long period of time, they will eventually turn their anger against you. So far, the punishments netted by offenders have been slight, at least in this country. Virus Bulletin reports that David Smith, creator of the Melissa virus, “was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison and fined $5,000 for causing more than $80 million in financial damage.” Well, at least he got more than Ken Lay.

But that can change in a heartbeat. In an age when terrorism is defined as not being with us, writing a virus disruptive of the nation’s economic well-being could conceivably fall under the generous umbrella of terrorism. And it may be punished accordingly. There are, of course, plenty of nations already less tolerant of deliberately destructive cyber behavior. China, for one, executed two hackers for embezzlement.

So arrogant are the virus writers that, as Twist reports, some offenders actually claim “viruses are an art and a form of expression and should not be stopped.” Well, I suppose arson is a form of expression too, but that hardly means it should be encouraged. It doesn’t help that industry analysts frequently fawn over the “elegance” of a virus or worm. One writer was positively euphoric about the Slammer worm: “only a 376 byte program,” he beamed. Admiring the elegance of a piece of code that is designed to damage public networks and private computers is akin to expressing admiration for the arsonist because he was able to burn an entire building with a single match.

The issue is not whether an individual virus is cleverly executed but ultimately what positive purpose does all of this cleverness serve? The world will go on in spite of hackers, crackers, viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. Yes, they will succeed in annoying us, but anyone with a conscience harms himself when he harms others. As much as we may want to believe otherwise, the bill for our actions always comes due.

It was Abraham Lincoln who observed, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Well, the virus writers have the power. I guess we’re all waiting to see signs of character.