With the recent publicity of the conficker (well, I’ve started to call it something else but I won’t go there) virus people have been asking me “why do people write computer viruses?” Well, there isn’t a one size fits all answer to that. It’s like asking someone in high school why do they play football – you’ll see that there is a variety of reason why people do things like this. Here are a few reasons

The simplest reason is to cause fear, chaos, and panic. Yes, some people enjoy inciting these emotions in us. It gives them power to make hundreds of thousands to millions of people panic. They sit back and watch the news reports come in of how this virus is going to destroy everyone’s computer unless they get downloads, update their virus protection and so on.

Another reason is for a protest. Many people don’t like Microsoft (and Windows) so they’ll write these to go after this company. Some people will think that other operating systems such as Mac and Linux don’t have any viruses that they would either purchase a Mac or go Linux (and Linux is getting easier and easier every day to run, if you want, go give Ubuntu a try).

A more sinister reason is to sell more of their product, a.k.a. scareware. These people construct a virus that traditionally is an executable from a website (ever see those pop-ups that say “your computer is out of date” or something like that? When you click on the window it installs a script that flags as a positive with most virus scanners and will also usually redirect your browser to – what else? – their own “anti-virus” software which they claim will be the only solution to get rid of the virus (most notably Malware Defender 2009 etc..). Some of these can be easily removed while others will take a lot of time to remove.

People also do this to test security systems of companies, personal computers, networks, and so on. They write the virus and watch the extent of the damage and then learn ways to hack into “secured” networks to gain information (customer database etc..).

Another question that pops up is “Why does only Windows have viruses?” While this can make people believe that MacOS and Linux are impenetrable – this is not the case. It’s simply numbers. If you are going to take the risk of writing a virus and want to get the maximum effect, then you want to be able to affect the most number of people – simply Windows is the largest OS used worldwide.

From the Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

Median (the pie chart to the side) reports that 68.27% of desktop computers are running Windows XP and 22.29% of desktop computers are running Windows Vista. Throw in the 1.24% using Windows 2000 that means that over 91% of the desktop computers, worldwide are using a Windows operating system. So, if you had this mindset, would you want to use your resources to affect the 4.81% using Mac OS, 1.05% running Linux or over 91% running Windows. Anyone should easily see why Windows is the largest target for viruses and malware.

From the rest of the charts on that page you can easily see that Microsoft operating systems dominate just about every aspect of computers and computing.

So, what can people do to protect themselves? It’s very simple and most programs for this can be free. Instead of writing all this over again, I’ve had a category just for security here:

http://www.edblood.com/category/security/

And a post on keeping your computer fast and clean:

http://www.edblood.com/2008/12/some-tips-on-keeping-your-computer-running-fast-and-clean/

Good luck everyone and keep those computers clean!