let's be part of the problem

DVForge - Virus Prize 2005
what the hell are these people thinking, offering to pay people to write viruses for the mac and spread them in the wild? like virus writers don't already have enough motivation to write and spread viruses - especially when it comes to being the first one for a new platform or the first one in the wild for a new platform... those sorts of things already make them (in)famous...

these folks have clearly had a break our ethical reality - you do not need a proof of concept virus to prove viruses can spread on the mac - mac OS X is basically a form of unix and the very first viruses that fred cohen wrote when doing his seminal work on viruses back in the '80s worked on unix systems... and they did work, they spread on production systems...

come on, folks - all general pupose computing platforms are susceptible to viruses... all of them... it's been proven - and i don't mean the way you prove things in court with evidence, because there will always be new platforms for which there is no evidence yet... i mean it's been proven on paper with logic - the only facilities a virus needs are those that are already present in the definition of general purpose computer...

these people are not solving any real problem by offering a reward to virus writers for writing yet more viruses (and you know damn well there are going to be a lot more viruses written than rewards handed out)... all they are doing is making virus spreading (because you do need to spread your virus so that it makes it's way onto the target systems naturally in order to get the reward) seem more legitimate by wrapping it up like it's some sort of good deed that puts a set of misconceptions by uninformed people to bed... the fact is that they are soliciting behaviour that is illegal under canadian laws (criminal mischief pertaining to data) as well as laws in a variety of other countries that have unauthorized-access-related legislation...

john mcafee reputedly paid for virus collections and thus became a pariah in the anti-virus industry for supplying virus writers with financial motivation to write viruses... these people here are supplying financial motivation to write & spread viruses and that absolutely contributes to the problem, rather than the solution... these people are not interested in the greater good, they're only interested in making a name for themselves and they don't care how much damage they cause in the process...

update 5:30pm: well, that was quick... seems a lot of people contacted the guy in charge and convinced him to stop the contest... hurray!... now let's move on...