Crème de la Cybercrime · Chapter 5 221 Frequently Asked Questions Q: Is it really that easy to make money out of e-crime? A: Well, you need contacts, an infrastructure, and some technical knowledge, or access to someone who has such knowledge. And you probably need reasonable knowledge of the law to help you avoid being pursued by it. Excuse us if we don't give you specific information on how to pursue a career in organized crime.J Q: Aren't there any female virus writers? A: Very few, at least that we know of.The first "Generic Virus Writer" paper addresses that issue. Q: Gordon writes about alt.comp.virus. Is that a useful resource? A: David Harley used to be very much involved with that group (he co-wrote and co-maintained the FAQ Gordon mentions), but stopped visiting some years ago. Like most of the "legit" researchers who used to represent the Good Guys there, he got bored with the poor signal-to-noise ratio.There's also an alt.comp.anti-virus, which attempts to represent a more white hat view (a.c.v. included a lot of virus writers and wannabes.) The moderated comp.virus group was a much better resource, but has been dormant for many years, and at present looks likely to be quietly put to sleep. Q: So are there no hobbyist virus writers any more? A: There are, but probably not so many, and they tend to be less vocal (or attract less attention). Q: Don't AV researchers ever write viruses? Doesn't that affect their competence to defend us against malware? A: Some don't. (And that includes some of the most competent researchers.) Those that do, do so under carefully controlled circumstances. No, they don't release them into the wild and then make us buy updates that will detect them. And most AV companies still don't employ virus writers (knowingly, anyway.) This is probably more common among other sectors of the security industry. Q: What's the difference between a bot and a Trojan? A: Bots, even in the limited sense of the term used here, are not exactly a single class of malware (except in so far as they further the interests of a botmaster, maybe).They mostly belong to the general class of Trojan, but some viruses and worms have also been classified as bots. www.syngress.com