Why Hackers Write Virus?

This is common frequently asked questions by many peoples, especially the victims, that ‘Who creates a virus?’ or ‘Why hackers write virus’. Is there any profit infecting users with some unwanted piece of infected code or just they write a virus to pass their time and have some fun?

I remember when I attended my first Computer class in school, my teacher exclaimed to me “don’t use this computer, it has many virus”. At that time, our school didn’t have many computers, so I used shared the computer with my classmate. I had many questions that time, like, What if I used that Computer? Could it cause any harm to me? Do virus can infect a person, like infect a person as the zombie. I know these are very silly questions, but I had all these in my mind.

After some classes, I asked my teacher, From where viruses come? I do remember she smiled at my question and told me, “some peoples do good and some do worse, those who do good: make games and those who do badly: make these bad virus”.

Although, Now I knew from where the virus came. I got to know humans (hackers) write virus but Why hackers write the virus? I never asked this question to anyone but time teaches everything, so I got to know How, Why hackers write the virus?

The purpose of writing this article is to share my information with everyone who knows and wanted to know about why hackers write the virus. Yesterday, One of my friends asked this question to me.

Recently got #infected with #botnet #computer #virus @syed_fahad_07 Why do #Hackers write virus? They want to test #Vulnerability or #breach personal data or just to break #security ?

— kyra Emmerson (@kyraemmerson) January 8, 2018

History of Computer Viruses

• The First Virus: The First Computer Virus Creeper, written in 1971 by Bob Thomas of BBN Technologies. This virus was named after the cartoon character “Creeper” in “Scooby Doo”. Generally known as the first computer virus, Creeper spread through DEC PDP-10 computers on an ARPAnet. Reported that, Creeper displays “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” on affected computers.
• The Second Virus: In 1982, 15 years old Rich Skentra wrote Elk Cloner. ELK Cloner was a boot sector virus, infected Apply II computers and first ever virus reported in wild.
• The Third Virus: Brain.a, a first IBM computer virus that brought revolution in computer viruses. Brain.a was generally a boot sector virus, written by Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Alvi in Lahore, Pakistan in the year 1986.

The first Antivirus program was Reaper, which was created to delete Creeper.

Who Writes Computer Virus?

• Hobbyists
• Cyber Criminals
• Spy
• Businessman 

The Hobbyists

Many of the peoples have coding as the hobby, like me. Programmers like to write code for anything, from a code to refresh a page after every 5 seconds to the code to execute the program on a remote computer. Every task performed in the computer has a successfully executed code in the back-end of a system.

Hobbyists create code most of the times and some tries to find the vulnerability and exploit it to have some fun and show off to their friends. Brain.a was also created as a hobby. The Alvi brothers (creator of Brain.a) were expert in UNIX systems, and DOS seems very vulnerable system to them, and they thought to exploit it using the self-coded program. They wanted to see if they could transmit code from one system to another or it could be transmitted as a virus.

And hopefully, IT WORKED! They included their phone number in the code and started getting calls from universities business from all over the world, asking what it was.

The Criminals

To many peoples, Spam is a big business. In order to send a lot of spam, spammer need a lot of computers and to keep themselves safe, these computers should not belong to them. They use botnets here. What is botnet?

A botnet is a group of infected computers connected to a network. All bots (computers) over botnet have same malware running on their system. An attacker uses the botnet to use victim’s computer to send spam without the knowledge of the victim. Bots work as a zombie over a network, they just keep doing what is instructed to them by the attacker.

The malware on botnet allows the attacker to capture and control users computers remotely. They use victim’s computers to spread a virus to other computers and enlarge their botnet, send not only just fake offers but also phishing attacks and logging keystrokes that give them access to bank details, financial data and personal information of victim.

The main cause of the increase in virus attacks is ‘ vulnerability of systems’. The Microsoft Windows XP, the ancient Operating System is unbelievably the widely used operating system. From home users to ATM machines,  over 50% of the active machines connected to the internet uses Windows XP. And it’s very insecure.

The Spy

• Adware
• System monitors
• Cookies tracker
• Trojans

Whenever spyware is used for the malicious purpose, it’s presence is hidden from the user and difficult to detect. Some spyware such as keylogger may be installed by the system administrator on shared computer intentionally in order to track users activity.

If you use Facebook, then you should read below carefully:

Spyware has eventually declined as the practice of tracking users activity, has been pushed ever further into the mainstream by major websites and data mining companies.

These generally break no known laws and compel users to be tracked, not by fraudulent practices, but by the default settings created for users and stated in terms-of-service agreements.

When you create an account on Facebook, you agree to their Terms of services but luckily no one reads the whole document. By accepting terms of services you allow Facebook to track your browsing activity not only on Facebook but on other websites too.

The Businessman

They are programmers, who can write good viruses and sells them other persons in return of money. They are not aware of the use of software they write. This types of programmers are also called blind coders.

The sole purpose of writing virus to them is to only make money. Now a days, criminals visits online markets to purchase viruses and offer huge amount of money in return. These markets are specially located in far away from internet, called Dark Net. Dark Net is full of illegal sites and activities, buyers and seller meet their to complete their transactions.

In conclusion, we at CSA Labs, are not encouraging anyone to visit Dark Net. The information provided here is the result of research for the content and we do not support frauds and illegal activity.

How to stay safe from viruses:

• First of all, Install an effective antivirus program on your system.
• Installing antivirus does not mean you have won the battle, keep update your antivirus.
• Use a good firewall on both home and public networks.
• To ensure more security, use premium VPN.
• Do not easily believe in offers coming to your mailbox.
• Use difficult passwords consists of alphanumeric with symbols.