Virus, Trojan, Worm, etc..

[sanddbox]

Obviously, he's attempting to learn about viruses/worms/Trojans/Keyloggers, but HTS does not condone Illegal activity. It may be a roundabout way to get the information he wants in a way that does not violate the legal disclaimer. He just didn't think it out that well.

Okay kid, here's something you need to know about viruses... There ARE places on the internet to find source code and even DOWNLOAD viruses to inspect, but these sites go down almost as quickly as they go up.
The thing about viruses is that they are not just like a regular program. You don't tell it "Go here, delete that, then print a mean message"...

Viruses are some of the most complex and intricate programs written. The key aspect is that the majority of work put into them is in developing the AI (artificial intelligence) coding within it. A virus RUNS ITSELF on an infected host machine. It searches for logs of it's presence and deletes them. It attempts to infiltrate and take control of any programs that detect its presence and would seek to eliminate it. It opens backdoors into the computer that the hacker can use (assuming that it's a Trojan or worm). It can shoot an email to the hacker that wrote it, saying "Okayyy, the computer is totally effed. By the way, here's a log of all keys pressed, which includes credit card numbers, usernames/passwords, etc."...

You don't just "research" viruses...you have to understand the subtle programming behind them to get how they work. Hell, I'd venture to say they're almost as complicated as women

Obviously you don't know anything about viruses. They are rarely complex and intricate. They usually just turn you into a zombie in a botnet, keylog you, install a RAT, or delete your harddrive.

There is no 'artificial intelligence' causing them to 'evolve'. Backdoors and keyloggers are not complex. They're simple, and they're used by people that can't hack for real.

[faazshift]

There is no 'artificial intelligence' causing them to 'evolve'. Backdoors and keyloggers are not complex. They're simply, and they're used by people that can't hack for real.

Yeah. The closest thing I know are self-adapting worms (which still have their limitations). Programmatic artificial intelligence hasn't, to my knowledge, been achieved yet. There are some pretty complex pieces of code, but nothing that "thinks for itself". Viruses are limited to what the programmer made them to do.

[cilpolir]

There is no 'artificial intelligence' causing them to 'evolve'. Backdoors and keyloggers are not complex. They're simply, and they're used by people that can't hack for real.

Yeah. The closest thing I know are self-adapting worms (which still have their limitations). Programmatic artificial intelligence hasn't, to my knowledge, been achieved yet. There are some pretty complex pieces of code, but nothing that "thinks for itself". Viruses are limited to what the programmer made them to do.

I think it will never be achieved that a program can think of itself, or there must be a huge amount of coding behind it that thought about every possebly variable or that's able to completly rewrite itself.

[tgoe]

Evolution is basically a brute force operation No intelligence required. The best example I can think of is the old macro viruses from MS Word. Many instances found in the wild weren't actually written by anyone thanks in part to whoever thought up 'On Error Resume Next'.

http://vx.netlux.org/lib/aas06.html#p14
http://www.symantec.com/press/1997/n970923c.html

[insomaniacal]

There is no 'artificial intelligence' causing them to 'evolve'. Backdoors and keyloggers are not complex. They're simply, and they're used by people that can't hack for real.

Yeah. The closest thing I know are self-adapting worms (which still have their limitations). Programmatic artificial intelligence hasn't, to my knowledge, been achieved yet. There are some pretty complex pieces of code, but nothing that "thinks for itself". Viruses are limited to what the programmer made them to do.

I think it will never be achieved that a program can think of itself, or there must be a huge amount of coding behind it that thought about every possebly variable or that's able to completly rewrite itself.

You're sort of correct, but you can simulate a computer "thinking" by applying formulas to situations and telling the computer to give the best solution to the formula. Most video game AI works in this way. There was a "bot" someone wrote that someone sent me awhile back. It was real intelligence, but it would pick up and learn words the more you talked to it. It was pretty cool, as it was really repetitive and boring at first, but it started to learn enough words that it became possible to have a conversation with it. I'll try to find a link later and post it, but I've no time ATM.

[MrAdaam]

I don't look forward to the day that Viruses are able to think and adapt so to speak, that would become very hard to combat and would require a very large lump of code to fight back.

On topic, I think all that you'll need would be the names and the type of attack that would happen. However, i would be interested into how some malicious software works. I hope to make a career out of security on computers in the near future.

[Goatboy]

Without bothering to read all posts in this thread, I'd like to add (or repeat) that size is somewhat of a consideration. Any artificial intelligence is going to take up quite a bit of space, which is fine in a trojan, but a worm is another story.

[NoFault]

ergo decipiatur @ Goat