Viruses and hackers

In this task we are speculating problems related to computing: viruses and hackers.

Anyone who has spent extended amounts of time working with computers has very likely had some experience with viruses.

For instance, most of Bill’s experience has come from relatives who downloaded software that installed trojans and other viruses on PCs. While most were easily removed, there was one that disabled the firewall and the anti-virus on the PC. Other viruses, also trojans, have also been found by him in "cracks" for various PC programs. On one computer at a place he worked, a virus redirected all websites to various porn sites, causing various problems. 
All were fixed by booting into Windows Safe Mode and removing the virus via anti-virus software or by manual deletion of all infected files. In some cases, a complete reinstallation of the system OS was necessary.  In one case, the computer was fixed by using Window XP’s repair mode.

In all cases, the virus infections were the result of a lack of knowledge on the users’ parts and not any flaw with the operating systems themselves.  Regardless of this, Bill hasn’t experienced e-mail viruses despite the emphasis put on this by various authorities.

Malware has been a larger issue for Bill while working on PCs for other people. One annoying thing has been various forms of spyware that install themselves without permission. Another is the very obstructive “search bar” browser add-ons.

For some very odd reason, viruses can be found on some PCs after running a scan yet have found no performance issues with them nor any alerts by various firewalls. Not only that, but the files that the "viruses" were found in were, after some research, testing with false positives.

On the other hand, Pavlo has not had a lot of problems caused by viruses. He switched to Linux-based systems a few years ago and it virtually cut him off from the world of viruses since the number of viruses designed for Linux/ Mac OS is relatively minimal.

Ville has experienced all sorts of viruses, ranging from small data miner softwares to full-out backdoor traps. In general, 99% were related to Windows environment and also required the user to actually do something (open a file, link etc), instead of spawning forward without the user knowing. Ville noticed the same thing as Pavlo: switching the OS to Linux-base relieved him of such problems, since majority of viruses are designed for Windows environment, since majority of PC's run that environment.

As for hackers, the Request for Comments RFC 1392 states that one is "a person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular." Unfortunately, not all hackers limit themselves on just that. Many hackers find pleasure in doing illegal actions for the sake of earning dirty money and not just knowledge of how things work. The hacker movement has its roots in 60s when it started as a hobby of programmers and other IT-people that were curious about the workings of the IT systems in those days. While it started as a recreational hobby, it’s now a profession for many IT-specialists which are either black (bad) or white (good) hackers. 

There have been a large number of notable hackers.
One of them is Jonathan James - he was already a hacker at 16 years old when he was arrested and sentenced. He had managed to get into NASA’s network and steal 1.7 million dollars worth of software which was created to control various systems on the International Space Station. Jonathan himself later commented that he did so in order to improve his knowledge of C language of programming and, moreover, as he stated, that the stolen software was “... crappy ... certainly not worth $1.7 million like they claimed."
http://www.itsecurity.com/features/top-10-famous-hackers-042407/  

There can also be a different type of hacker. A good example is Kevin Mitnick, who used social skills and manipulation in order to gain access where he shouldn't be able to. He pointed out that the weakest point in information security is usually looking at the screen, so software faults and weak points are not always to be blamed at: the users need to know what they are doing and what/who they can trust. Most viruses and malware take advantage of this social weakness: they trick themselves in the system via user ignorance.