Malicious Malware is Not a Nasty Undergarment

Malware -definition from Dictionary.com

Software intended to damage a computer, mobile device, computer system, or computer network, or to take partial control over its operation

and for those of  you who are interested ‘mal’ in Spanish means bad. I think the first thing I wanted to know about malware creators, otherwise known as, script kiddies, virus writers and cybercriminals, was why-why would you do such a thing? According to secure list.com “[almost all] inventions  , mass use technologies have, sooner or later, become a tool of hooligans, swindlers, blackmailers and other criminals.” The key here is that the target is something utilised by a mass-market. These malicious acts originated from agile minded programming students with a little time on their hands and something to prove. The Internet has also been a source of material for writing computer viruses for DYI would be programmers with low self-esteem who are wanting to prove something to the world. Most dangerous however, are viruses and Trojans written by professional programmers for ‘other’ reasons.

A group named LulzSec met each other ‘virtually’ in the chat rooms of the hacker group Anonymous. These ‘guys’ must have had a lot of spare time and very active ‘grey cells’ as the reasoning behind their first hacker attack was a bit of name-calling. The first victim was Fox.com where they hacked and leaked “the profiles and names of 73,000 X Factor US contestants”. Targets were chosen originally to highlight the lax security measures of large corporations such as Sony, stealing millions of customer data base files and causing the company to go off line for an extended period. Eventually the group became too cocky and careless and eventually got caught. Their motivation was “to gain attention, embarrass website owners and ridicule security measures”.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to understand a hacker’s reasoning other than to enhance self-esteem, for financial gain or as I mentioned earlier ‘other’ reasons. Go Figure!

Resources:

Arthur, C 2013, LulzSec: what they did, who they were and how they were caught, The Guardian, website, 17 May, viewed 29 October 2014,
<http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/16/lulzsec-hacking-fbi-jail&gt;

Who creates malware and why?, Securelist Kaspersky lab, website, 1997-2014, viewed 17 November 2014,<http://securelist.com/threats/who-creates-malware-and-why/&gt;