Thursday, July 06, 2006

what is the VX?

the vx is a community of people involved in the creation and distribution of viruses and viral materials... the term 'vx' is an acronym that stands for Virus eXchange - it was originally the name of a virus trading BBS (bulletin board system) back in the 90's...

members of the vx community (also known as the virus underground), are known as vx'ers... many in this group of people create, share, publish and in some cases even spread computer viruses...

while some people outside the community like to claim that it's members are anti-social, the fact that they formed a social group suggests otherwise... just because one social group does things that the rest of us don't like doesn't make them anti-social, it makes them a counter-culture... furthermore, studying the group reveals that they are motivated by the desire for many of the same social rewards that motivate everyone else - respect, social status, notoriety, influence, friendship, collaboration, etc. all within their social group... that's not to say that those are the only reasons people create/distribute/release viruses, but those that participate in the vx community do so because they are motivated at least in part by the same things that make any set of people form a social group...

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well i couldn't find the community you mentioned in your blog but i have to tell you that isn't the only vx community. We also have one with exactly named vxcommunity (originally vortex community) which is an online multi gaming community and not hazardous at all :). Just wanted to mention it. Have a good day

kurt wismer said...

the vx community i was talking about is not nearly so easy to find... it's not a site you can search for with google...

as for the name of your community, congratulations on choosing a name that's been used to describe bad guys for over a decade... hopefully no one gets confused...