Virus writers digital scalp-taking says expert

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

Computer virus writers are often narcissistic and find the effort software giants such as Microsoft make to create patches to block their code as digital scalp-taking, says an industry expert.

David Perry, global director of education for anti-virus company Trend Micro, said for many virus writers the pursuit was more about intellectual point scoring than a love of wanton destruction.

California-based Perry was in New Zealand last month to launch a new product designed to protect large organisations from virus attacks by screening traffic after it left the public network and before it reached the firewall.

He said the problem with a lot of virus software was that it was fine for checking systems for viruses at the disk and application level but it failed to screen "stuff" that sat on the network layer.

Because the digital scalp-hunters were getting smarter, they were writing more sophisticated viruses that were harder to find, he said.

And under America's first amendment, which gave all citizens the right to freedom of speech, writing a virus was technically not illegal.

"It is only the application of the writing that is bad."

Perry said Trend Micro dealt with hundreds of viruses a day that were released into the environment.

"Sometimes writers send their stuff in just to see how long it takes companies like ours to break them open and analyse them," he said. "It makes you wonder at how much creative and powerful brainpower is being squandered by these kids."