In computer news this week, 03/13/2001

Here comes the do-it-yourself viruses, courtesy of your friendly Internet news magazine ...

A few weeks ago we all heard about the Anna Kournikova virus, which wreaked havoc on hundreds of thousands computers, promising to deliver a picture of the attractive tennis star, but instead delivering a computer virus.

What was actually interesting about this story is that the originator of the virus was quickly caught, and turned out to be a teenager in Denmark. Instead of being a skilled computer programmer, this kid said that he had virutally no computer or programming skills at all, and had merely downloaded a do-it-yourself virus creation kit off the internet.

The internet magazine Wired news did a story on this at the time, and recently did a followup story; Providing details of how the program was free and easy to download, and that the program's simple point-and-click interface allowed even the most non-technical person to create and email a virus. They even had pictures of the program screens.

Screen 1 asks you for the name you want to call your virus, asks for your name so you can proudly let the world know who you are, and asks you to create a filename for the virus with suggestions. Suggestion of Michael Jordan if you are going to try to infect sports fans, suggestion of some super model's name if you are going to try to infect men, and so on.

Then you're asked what file extension on the virus you want, how the virus should be transmitted - as an attachment ; what programs you want it to infect - such as Microsoft Outlook - the industry standard email program, and finally what message you want to put in the email to entice people to open it - and get infected.

All point and click - as simple as filling in a new contact form in Outlook. And voila - you have created your own virus - and you can now infect the entire world.

This might have been good reporting if they had stopped here, but no, they had to take it further, and over the line, in my opinion. They included in both their stories a link directly to the site of the Argentine hacker's site, so that anyone who read the story, could then continue on and actually have immediate access to this virus kit. The only problem was getting on the website, because of course as soon as the story came out, every teenage hacker-wanna-be in the world was trying to get on this site to become the next virus villian in the news.

The site was overloaded for days, and some internet magazines reported that the hacker had actually removed the virus from his site. But then the hacker sent out a press release of his own, stating that he had not removed the kit, and he was in fact creating another even better do-it-yourself virus kit.

Over the almost 15 years I've been doing Raw Bytes, I've reported on many similar sensational computer stories, and I knew where certain news making programs and sites were located, even back in the old pre-internet bulletin board days. But in reporting on these stories, it never even ocurred to me to reveal this information in a news broadcast, knowing the consequences of revealing such potentially damaging information.

I sent emails to both the reporter and the Editor of Wired news, asking them if they felt that their story was responsible journalism. I never received a reply. I guess this is the new internet world of reporting.

But remember, if you go to a known illegal hacker site to download a program, maybe that hacker has anticipated your coming, and maybe there's a nasty surprise waiting there for you in what you download.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230