memo to 0.0.0.0: virulent communication- widely known virus behavior
- distinctions? the virus vs. the worm
- possible virus behavior
- desirable virus behavior
- trust, viruses, and six degrees of separation
- highly recommended reading
Computer viruses are evil. If not for anti-virus software they would easily spread from computer to computer. They either destroy your computer, mangle your data, or generally annoy. Viruses go off at a certain time. Viruses wreak some form of chaos.IMHO, most virus creators don't really wish any ill will to anyone. I think that they are overconfident and feel a challenge. And they seem to be in their own large dream world that doesn't involve consequences to the world and themselves. I do not think they are particularly creative. They do not appear to spend much time on their work.
A virus is thought to travel from client to client. It is contracted by some human action. A worm travels from server daemon to server daemon. It is contracted without any human interaction. But the with most servers becoming cheaper workstations, and more and more PCs being logged in constantly and running more daemons the distinction between client and server becomes less clear.
It is naive to think that viruses either have some immediate effect or must wake up on a special day and toast your data. It is also naive to believe you don't have any viruses just because you have anti-virus software. Conformity hightens your problem. Multitudes of people have the same type of hardware, the same operating system, the same software, and the same filesystem layout.Many of us could already be exposed to hundreds of malicious viruses performing hundreds of nefarious tasks. These viruses could be lurking around waiting to see some banking info, another might concentrate on stocks, another might occassionally scan for Social Security numbers, another for online passwords. It's easy and probably not unique to conceive of a dozen different viral architectures that allow for new viruses to be integrated into our machines.
If you were a software distributor, you'd want to find the next killer application so that a few billion people would download it. But what if you didn't need to convince people to download it? What if they acquired it like the flu?
"Yeah, I picked up that video feature sometime last week when I chatted with that Czech girl. I think someone in Toronto made it. Yeah, it is pretty cool. It should have spread to you by now if you still trust me and allow video feature mods."The Internet already allows content to drive updates and new program downloads. The notion of a viral approach is only a consentual checkbox away.
"Viralettes" would need to have some levels of certification. There would need to be different provable, registries of trust. But because some people will grant some levels of trust to friends there should be innoculation centers operating similarly to current business models -- but with technical designs more similar to an mbone push than a monthly pull.
