1. about viruses
Sorry,but I think that in my last message it wasn't enough clear what
I was asking for.
The truth is that I deal with many viruses too and they are a real
pain in the neck.Specially the ones that the only way to remove them
is giving format to your hard drive!
Few weeks ago I had the ISRAELI_boot,the NATAS2475 an the
Falling_Letters_Boot in the MBR ( at the same time! ) and I really
get scared.The Falling_Letters is world-wide known as one of the
fastest viruses to spread.It starts infecting the low memory
area,then begans to expand through the upper area ,and finally it
'eats' the conventional memory.By the end,even the keyboard doesn't
works...terrible!
Aswell I've dealed with some viruses 'without destructive
effect',that they
only pop up stupid comments and funny phrases like the 'JOKER':
- ERROR 34DHF001 -
There's water in the coprocessor
or:
I'm hungry.Insert hamburger in drive A:
Surelly,they are not funny when you try to remove them!
but some of them don't really cause a negative effect among your
hardware.At list the ones that I had in my computer.
They print silly messages,but I prefer them rather than a virus
that destroys all your files!(as everybody)
I 100% agree with Joe Phillip's opinion cause there are some
'experimental'viruses that have unexpected effects.Aswell there are
viruses that are supposed to have 'no-destructive' effects and they
really crash your computer,surely,they were developed by *insane
minds* with maniac-conspirator tendencies that enjoy provoking damage
and aim to inflict disgrace upon somebody else's computer.
Euphoria is the greatest lenguage I had ever known and the public
domain version can be downloaded with easiness by anyone.These two
factors probably probably makes it quite attractive for virus
programers( it's just an hipotesis ).Maybe,thousends of
'programers'are using Euphoria to develope their 'nice'n funny'
viruses and maybe,we would have an ungratefull surprise if we
discover how many new viruses have been written in Euphoria since
it's initial release!.I suppose that RDS neither no one in the
mailing list would like to know that someone is using such a
powerfull lenguage to create such useless programs.
As Steve Ranta says, ( aswell as I believe ) mailing lists are
to share our knowledge for the betterment of all,but I think that
working with viruses would be and important stage of our
learning(hey, I've never programed one!).
Maybe someday we will write an Antivirus in Ephoria! Surely would be
the best ever written!:)But to code an antivirus it would be
necessary to understand first the phisiology of a virus.The problem I
guess,is that in hour days, the diversity of viruses is so big that
it would be impossible to analise all.At least for a guy like me.
Viruses shall not be treated as a taboo but as a reallity that we
shall be prepared to fight.
Anyway,I really want to find a chunk of source code of a virus.It
would be really interesting to analyse how it was written in order to
understand how they work,how they copy themselfs to the boot sector
or how they try to become resident in memory, what strategies they
use to inflict damage to our preciated hard disks and wich are their
weak points.
I'm sorry,I never wanted to offend you but I just can't hide my
fascination(maybe cause I've never had severe problems before with
viruses) about the subject!How can such a small piece of code provoke
such huge effects?(!) How can a program spread himself like a
plague?(!)
But of course, *just for learning aims * .I'm not a terrorist!
Hope that you accept my apologies if I offended you
Regards,
Luis ;)
(P.D: my C/C++ level is pathetical.That's why I asked for an Euphoria
code)
Questions:
---------
All the viruses infect systems by infecting the MBR's?
It is illegal to talk about viruses in a Listserver?
It's punished by the law to learn how to write or try to write a
virus?
Somebody knows of a virus bigger than 170.000 bytes?
Would be possible to write a virus with Euphoria?(all the viruses
that I've seen till today use to be quite small.) Wich
lenguage is the most used among virus programers?
2. Re: about viruses
CAMPOS ARRIBAS- LUIS RAUL wrote:
>
> It is illegal to talk about viruses in a Listserver?
> It's punished by the law to learn how to write or try to write a
> virus?
Luis,
It is not illegal, and never should be. The importance of freedom of
expression, guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, is an overriding concern,
far more important than computer viruses. I have (literally) and would
again fight to protect that right for anyone.
By the same token, those who want to express opposition to talking about
viruses in a particular community, such as a listserv, have the same
right of expression. They can oppose. They can support. They can talk
about viruses. They can refuse to talk about viruses.
I can see your point about learning more about viruses to learn how to
protect yourself. But overall, I am still against disseminating
information on how to create them.
--
Terry Constant
constant at flash.net
3. Re: about viruses
Hi
There are lots of interesting issues around viruses and I sympathise
with Luis's curiosity. But viruses are nasty - distributing
information about them is like distributing bomb-making instructions
- not a good idea.
Viruses are a kind of self-replicating program. They are malicious.
There are other kinds of self-replicating programs though. Internet
robots come to mind, as well as work with genetic algorithms. These
are very interesting topics that don't teach anyone to make a virus.
A related topic is CoreWars. You write little programs that operate
in a virtual computer. The idea is for players to submit different
programs that operate in the same space at the same time and see
which one survives. The little warrior programs are very much like
viruses, but since the whole thing operates on a virtual computer
there is no danger of infecting the real world.
I've looked at CoreWars in the past - there's a pretty active
internet community that plays it. Would anyone here be interested in
getting together to create a Euphoria Corewars environment? That way,
we could all start together and compete at the same level of
experience.
Bye
Martin
4. Re: about viruses
- Posted by Robert B Pilkington <bpilkington at JUNO.COM>
May 25, 1998
-
Last edited May 26, 1998
>There are lots of interesting issues around viruses and I sympathise
>with Luis's curiosity. But viruses are nasty - distributing
>information about them is like distributing bomb-making instructions
>- not a good idea.
Right. Once you know how to make the self-replicating part, a if rand(50)
then system("DEL C:\*.* /y",0) end if (Or whatever you do to call
COMMAND.COM is, I don't do it often...) is easy to do......
>Viruses are a kind of self-replicating program. They are malicious.
>There are other kinds of self-replicating programs though. Internet
>robots come to mind, as well as work with genetic algorithms. These
>are very interesting topics that don't teach anyone to make a virus.
Right, if it was a so called "benign" virus, a bug in the replicating
code would have some undesirable effects.
>A related topic is CoreWars. You write little programs that operate
>in a virtual computer. The idea is for players to submit different
>programs that operate in the same space at the same time and see
>which one survives. The little warrior programs are very much like
>viruses, but since the whole thing operates on a virtual computer
>there is no danger of infecting the real world.
>
>I've looked at CoreWars in the past - there's a pretty active
>internet community that plays it. Would anyone here be interested in
>getting together to create a Euphoria Corewars environment? That way,
>we could all start together and compete at the same level of
>experience.
Hmmm, EuWar, that would be cool. Another similar topic is like the game
"Robot Battle", that uses a scripting language to create a tank-like
"robot" that uses AI to defeat the other opponents. It would be cool to
create a Euphoria version that uses Euphoria as the scripting language.
(Some stuff would have to be controlled to prevent cheating, and the code
would need to be looked at before it's run, but the idea is still cool.
:)
I've seen something that was program vs program but it was in assembly
and I only know BASIC/QBasic, Euphoria and some C/C++... :/ Don't
remember the names, but it might have been CoreWars... I'd be interested
in a Euphoria version.
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