Conspiracy Theory: Are antivirus companies the ones who actually write the viruses?

[BillGates]

I have heard this from time to time and it definitely seems possible. This keeps their services in constant demand, and ensures that they always have the fix for it released shortly after the virus is "discovered."

Tangent - I'm just waiting for somebody to use the Klez virus with a more destructive payload. There will be some serious trouble then - it's still running rampant months after it was released. (I work at an ISP and still see customers with it all the time). That guy (Norton? ) did a great job writing that one up.

 

[Rilescat]

Yes, that would explain why these viruses don't have a more destructive payload. They propagate so readily, but usually all they do is screw up some jpgs.

It is hard to go buy and install a new version of Anti-virus if your computer is completely fried. I think (Norton ?) thought of that too.

 

[IGBT]

Often wondered about that. Highly possible. Or at the very least the contribute to them from time to time. How can we find out?? What a class action that would make.

 

[BillGates]

No doubt, what a scandal.

 

[JellyBaby]

There's been no proof of it but I will say they blow many so called "threats" way out of proportion to keep folks hooked on their products. Viruses in image files? C'mon on.

 

[tcsenter]

I don't think they have to, as there seems to be no shortage of individuals creating and disseminating viruses. Law enforcement officials have tracked down dozens of individuals who wrote and distributed viruses over the years and just about all of them have admitted to it, plead guilty, etc.

I suppose one could use their imagination and say these people were somehow 'paid' to take the fall for the antivirus company, but considering these people often face felony conviction, jail time, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, I don't see an upside here.

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

Conspiracy Theory: Is Billgates380 the one actually writing the replies to this thread?





Hey, it would make me, err... I mean him seem more popular!

 

[Beau]

Viruses are fun to make

 

[AnthraX101]

No, I *cough* know *cough* the autor of one of the viruses that norton identifies. Undestructive, of course.

Armani

 

[BillGates]

I found a webpage with about 2000 downloadable viruses - nothing real recent - but it would be fun to test out the various virus scanning programs with known viruses and see if they are detected, and detected correctly...

 

[max105]

One of my professors told us that it's not really the company that writes the viruses. Usually its a person or group of people in the company working on a virus (without the knowledge of the company) so that they have a job to uphold. Otherwise they'll be bumming around in the streets if there were no viruses.

 

[BillGates]

Originally posted by: max105
One of my professors told us that it's not really the company that writes the viruses. Usually its a person or group of people in the company working on a virus (without the knowledge of the company) so that they have a job to uphold. Otherwise they'll be bumming around in the streets if there were no viruses.

Exactly - that was the point of what I said earlier, and the essence of my topic...

 

[MrCodeDude]

This gives me ideas
-- mrcodedude

 

[singh]

There is simply no need. Plenty of virus writers around. I personally find that it's a lot more fun writing software to protect against viruses rather than writing them. Making viruses is so easy these days.

 

[xirtam]

I believe that they are. But I don't believe that they're the *only* ones. I just think that it's interesting that some of them actually advertise a percentage of catchable viruses out there. To do that, they either need to know the total number of viruses or know a bunch of them. To know that many, I think they'd have to develop a good portion of them themselves. Of course, they could be lame and just come up with all the variants. That would work too.

 

[bsobel]

BillGates, as someone who writes AV software, your post is wrong and offensive.
Bill

 

[The Stigenator]

Back in the day I know that several viruses that were present in India were written by local AV companies. Do you guys remember "DIR2".. what a bitch that was a boot virus that sat on your partition, but also in your command.com and a few other places. We had a C and D drives on this machine (I believe it was a 286) and it sat on teh partition, we would clean "C" drive and by the time its done on next reboot D would get infected. Antiviruses werent too good those days.

Finally a local company wrote a small program for us to get rid of it. THey had our business over the years but I know they wrote viruses too. One of their products was an AV Add on ISA card that could be flashed (you send it to them every year) and they update your signatures.. It was a hardware antivirus, you couldnt get infected by DOS viruses.. It had a software component but the hardware portion of it worked great. It caught viruses far before any of the software ones did. McAfee was one of those which hardly caught viruses.

Edit:
Back in the day lot of viruses were written by AV companies to disable other AV companies softwares, stuff to say "hey ours can detect this virus theirs cant".. it was a survival tactic.. these days if they do write its very small number but still they do. Part of writing antivirus is writing a virus and knowing how a virus works.. so you got to write a virus to make an antivirus.

 

[smp]

of course

 

[MadRat]

Seems that most viruii get traced back to college kids in computer programming classes...

 

[db]

"Conspiracy Theory: Are antivirus companies the ones who actually write the viruses?"

It is a beautiful happenstance romance of the sort Sharon and Hamas enjoy.

 

[WarCon]

I was collecting viruses for the fun of it awhile back. I scanned the CD that had them on it and it only found 2/3's of them. But many of them were full stealth and morph capable, so maybe they had already changed from what the virus scanner had on record for its footprint. And it never became a public menace in that morphed condition.

I had visions of myself going insane and turning off my virus scanner and running all the files I could before my system became too unstable to run......... (But I caught myself in the nick of time)

 

[BillGates]

Originally posted by: bsobel
BillGates, as someone who writes AV software, your post is wrong and offensive.
Bill

When did Microsoft start writing antivirus software?? Could you send it to me please? Thanks.

 

[StattlichPassat]

Conspiracy Theory: Are antivirus companies the ones who actually write the viruses?

HA! Very creative, I must say, but no.

 

[bsobel]

When did Microsoft start writing antivirus software?? Could you send it to me please? Thanks.

I don't work for Microsoft, I work for Symantec.
Bill

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: billgates380
I have heard this from time to time and it definitely seems possible. This keeps their services in constant demand, and ensures that they always have the fix for it released shortly after the virus is "discovered."

Cues theramin... < Oooh-wee-e-e-e-ooo-o-oh > (old sci-fi sound effect) Right! And men didn't walk on the moon, either.

Whacha been smokin', and why aren't you sharing with everyone else?