Clive Thompson wrote an article about authors of viruses, or as he termed it, “The Virus Underground”. It was long (10 pages) and took me a few days reading a page or two at a time, but it was interesting.
I found out that Thompson runs a blog by the name of collision detection (using Movable Type) and discussed his article in a recent post. I just posted a comment letting him know I enjoyed the article, and that I heard his interview on NPR. It’s a small world.
Oh, and be careful when you’re reading the article. The first author pictured isn’t wearing a shirt for some reason and to the casual passerby it can look like something very different than an article on viruses.
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Alas, there was no need to post warning about the photo with the article, as it has gone to archive and archived articles do not have photos. This also means you must pay to read the article, and I’m not that interested in it.
Blast it all, I didn’t realize they were archived so quickly. The picture was of a male virus author with long hair and no shirt on. It bothered me every time I read the article, and it was at the top of every page.
Well, it was a good article. People will just have to take my word for it unless they want to pay to read it.
I read this a little while back. Basically the real writers do it for the challenge and distribute the code with a warning not to let loose the actual virus, i.e. that they’re innocent. However, as the author mentioned, they have to know dome dumb kid is going to take the code and let it loose.