The Reasons People Write Computer Viruses

When computers first became popular, mostly bored teens and college students wrote viruses. They would look for holes in the security of an application or operating system like Microsoft Windows to show that they were smarter than the people that programmed that application. Programming a computer is a difficult thing to do. You must know certain languages and syntax or symbols to make the page you see on your computer look right. Go to any webpage and on the menu bar, click on View then click on source. What you will see is the language used to create that page. There are rules and regulations as to format and it must meet the guidelines set up for web pages. They code each page so that you cannot change it. Every letter, space and character has a special meaning and if not done exactly right, the page will not look the way it should.

There are people that write viruses to do damage to a company or a group of people. Some disgruntled ex-employees, who have the knowledge and know how to get into the code, in an effort to get back at their boss after being fired, would go into the source code and alter it or put a virus into the code to make it do something different. In this way, he was getting back at them. Other people write viruses to make a name for them self.

I knew a young man about 23 years old that was writing a virus. This one would put a nice greeting on the screen when you opened a certain email. You would click where it said and your computer would restart. It was a cute little email so you would not expect anything bad to happen. It would do this three times and on the third time, your motherboard would fry. When I asked him why he would do that, his reply was that before releasing the virus he was going to contact the government and try to get money to either not release it or for the fix. While he was finishing it, he fell asleep on the third time and fried his own motherboard, served him right. He later became a real computer programmer. People do this to be noticed; to try to get money; for attention; and sometimes because they are mean and want other people to be inconvenienced. There is always a fix. They usually write it and try to sell it to the company that programmed the application or operating system they have attacked or infected.

There are viruses written that will make things disappear off your desktop and some that will destroy your files and your hard drive. The worse of all are the ones that steal your personal information. If you do not have a secured connection, some people that are playing online games with you are actually stealing information from your computer while playing a game. They can plant code into your computer and feed your information to a number of people and companies that are out to steal your information, your identity and your life savings. Some will even attack not only your bank account, but also the bank itself and draw as much money as they can out of it.

There is not a certain group of people or a certain mentality that write a virus. The people that do it want something. It might be recognition, even though it would be bad. They want to prove they are smarter than the people that wrote the code to begin with or want some sort of fame or gain.