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If there is one thing that can be classified as the bane of all IT professionals it is malware. Back in the first days of the internet all we had to worry about were viruses. Since those carefree and innocent days we have added Trojans, hijacks, worms, spyware, and phishing scams to the list of malicious objects that can compromise and adversely affect your computer. As an IT guy I am the first and last defense for all of my users against these hostile strings of 1s and 0s. Hence, all writers/coders/creators of malware are my mortal enemies.
I spend an inordinate amount of time with peoples’ computers just dealing with this threat. I am always on the lookout for the best protection I can give them as well as the best tools to deal with threats that make it onto the system. Not only that, but sometimes the tools are almost as bad as the problems they are trying to protect against. Some anti-malware shields bloat systems to the point of unresponsiveness, and sometimes when the companies behind them push out a bad update it can render the entire system inoperable.
There are many reasons for people to write malicious code and to execute digital attacks. In this article I am going to summarize all of these reasons into three main motivations; political, economic, and emotional.
The first is by far the most common reason, economics. It is a sad truth but there is money to be made in scamming people or compromising their computers. If a one of these individuals gains access to your computer they can get sensitive information such as your social security number, bank accounts, and credit card information. Not only that, but they can generally glean personal information that is required in accessing those previous accounts. The other form of attack that is much harder to protect against is phishing. Phishing relies less on computer insecurities and more on human nature; I assume you have all heard of the Nigerian prince scam by now. The most secure software is still only as secure as the person using it.
The second motivating factor is less published but is a very real threat, political. It is a well-known fact by now that every country is spying on each other; this has been going on for thousands of years. In this new era countries can now supplement their analog spies with digital minions. Most countries will tout their cyber warfare capabilities to help protect their country, but I think it is a safe assumption that they are also using these capabilities offensively. Recently China has been credited for an attack on Google; was China punished? No, it was chalked up to business as usual in the spy world; it is just how the Great Game of politics is played.
The last reason behind malicious code execution is one of the human heart. Often times people will become outraged, frustrated, or simply offended by what someone else does or says and gets violent on the offending person. When this happens on the internet the violence often takes places in the form of a cyber-attack; generally a denial of service attack. A DoS attack is an effort to make an internet resource (typically a website or server) unusable by its users temporarily. Two recent examples of emotional DoS attacks are the attack by Wikileaks supporters against MasterCard and VISA, and the 17-year old teenager attacking Call of Duty servers to increase his score.
Even though I can rationally understand the reasons behind these actions, I cannot condone them or understand them emotionally. The analog version is trying to understand a mass murder or a cat burglar. Saying that I wish no one would be in the business of perpetuating cyber-crime is similar to me saying I wish no one would go out and mug people in the park. Until said time of a cyber-crimeless world, cyber security is going to be a blossoming business and take up a lot of time for all of us IT people.
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