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Originally Posted by lotsofmagnets
i was under the impression computer viruses were created these days soley to keep anti-virus software relevant and thus keep the market alive. i wonder how active virus creation with malicious intent still is these days...
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I think it's still quite active. But nowadays the infected computers usually don't display any obvious symptoms: They're often used as part of much larger botnets. Virus writers have learned their lesson, that if you cause a big outbreak that screws with systems and pisses people off they will probably find you and send you to prison eventually. But modern computers are so complicated it's relatively easy to design one that flies under the radar especially to the vast majority of users as non-computer scientists. Unfortunately there is no one to punish for the evolution of new (natural) biological viruses. (God?
) (And most of the artificial ones are made by governments.
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These botnets can be used for various malicious purposes such as denial of service attacks and sniffing for financial information (there is serious money involved). Its very hard to tell if you're not actively monitoring your network connection and know what to look for. Hell, I could be infected with one right now and I know enough to make one myself (not that I would as I prefer to make constructive things), but I definitely watch my bank statements closely. I'm guessing this is similar to the reason that the most successful biological viruses don't cause serious harm to the host (ebola just wipes itself out whenever it enters a population), so considering computer viruses as a form of life is a very interesting concept, but I don't entirely buy it since they can't reproduce without major human assistance. Biological viruses inhabit the same sort of gray area as they can't reproduce themselves without a living host. But I suppose, DNA, machine code, at some level (like information theory) it's all the same shit, so if you count bio viruses why not computer viruses too. Cells are also physical machines, they have state, inputs and outputs.