Re: Get your computer viruses here!

[Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>]

Blue Boar wrote:

> val smith wrote:
> > I guess what you haven't convinced me of yet is how "malware" is any 
> > different from any other object in existance which can be used for both 
> > good or evil. I could stand on the corner selling rocks which people 
> > could use to study or to bash someone over the head with. How is that 
> > much different?
>
> Again, not that I disapprove of your project in general, ...

Aside from that, I am in full support of what BB said in his post.

The project is morally indefensible, and, as Dr Solly has already said 
several times, criminally negligent or otherwise illegal in very many 
legislations.

> ... but I'm a 
> little disappointed that you don't see the differences between "malware" 
> and "tool".

This is so terribly obvious that I think it is mark of the ethical 
development of any so-called "security researcher" whether they 
understand this or not.  "skiddie-level" folk certainly do not 
understand this almost certainly because their ethical development has 
not progressed to the point where they _can_ (or, if they are well-
advanced past the normal age range where they should be able to 
understand it, they probably have arrested or impaired ethical 
development).  Failure of adults to comprehend this similarly suggests 
arrested ethical development, so it is actually pointless trying to 
debate the point with them, as like the skiddies, they are unable to 
understand that their position is (or even could be) wrong.

> -Malware has no good applications.  The definition is that it is 
> something you don't want running on your machine.  There are no good 
> uses for it.  Good guys need to analyze it, so once it exists they need 
> for it to be available to them, but they don't use it for its intended 
> purpose.
>
> -Malware isn't like a vulnerability, technique or exploit.  Those 
> already existed, and were just waiting to be discovered.  Malware isn't 
> a problem and doesn't exist until someone creates it.  It's pure new 
> problem.
>
> There's no beneficial use for malware, just a need to study it.

The only thing I'd add is that further, in the case of self-replicating 
malware, the risk of it accidentally being spread further in the hands 
of those ill-prepared for handling such code is great.  Historically 
the AV industry (and others) has continually faced the utter BS 
suggestion that it is responsible for, if not writing, at least 
releasing and distributung, viruses to "drum up business", etc.  This 
has made responsible members of the AV industry _especially_ sensitive 
to any sample sharing that does not have proper safeguards ensuring to 
a very high degree of responsibility that shared samples will not get 
into the hands of those imadequately prepared to handle them equally 
conscientiously.  Schemes such as that under discussion here clearly 
abjectly fail such "tests", for even if there is a modest argument that 
such standards are "too high" for most of today's, typically non-
replicative, malware this scheme makes no allowance for the 
replicability of the malware it makes available.  When you start to 
think about what would be involved in "fixing" that, you will quickly 
recognize that the checks and balances thus needed to avert those 
problems with replicative malware make the main purpose of this scheme 
impossible to achieve, as avoiding such problems would require that 
someone accepted by the community as sufficiently competent to make 
such decisions would have to fully analyse each sample before only 
putting the non-replicative ones up for "sharing".

So, Val's scheme, and all similarly hare-brained stupidities that have 
come before it and that will inevitably follow it are doomed to severe 
ethical castigation and repudiation by genuinely competent researchers.


Regards,

Nick FitzGerald

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