Computer viruses can be equated to malicious code. Several forms of viruses include Trojan horses, bombs, worms, and bacterium.

There are many motivations behind authoring computer viruses. It is important to explore and discover these because victims of virus attacks may erroneously conclude that virus writers do not have any limitations, and that victims are unable to prevent or recover from such attacks. This attitude can prove even more damaging to victims when they experience second or multiple attacks without responding to protect themselves.

There is a story of budding innocence, in which a network technologist sought and perfected a way to use a program to maintain communications through a computer network with intermittent operating times. Thus, the first worm was created in a computer laboratory on an isolated network. But, a portable volume of data carrying the work, believed to be a floppy disk, was used by mistake in a separate network, and the worm replicated itself and took off over other company networks and escaped into the wild.

Beginning virus writers may not even intend to write a virus at all, but have their eyes opened by a learning event that shows an opportunity to increase their skills with a computing challenge. Little thought may be given to the legalities or the rights of network and equipment owners when a computer hacker is developing personal computing and programming skills. Self improvement and skill development are not seen as motivators so much as requirements for the individual to meet in order to survive in the new computer world or to imitate a role model.

Hacker activity and the creation of viruses seems to follow newly created network connections, especially those found in industry and in government. As it is with persons who cannot resist climbing Mount Everest, virus writers will ply there skills on a newly-available connection or network until their access is restricted.

Employee sabotage can account for a number of viruses as well. To take revenge on a company or boss, persons have destroyed hardware and facilities, planted logic "bombs" to destroy programs and data, entered data incorrectly, "crashed" systems, deleted data, held data hostage, and changed data. Sometimes the motivation was to get payback for a disciplinary action or loss of employment. At other times, the person wished to gain recognition and increased visibility and job security by miraculously saving the company from a

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about The reasons behind the creation of computer viruses?
We want to hear your view. Write now!