The Virus Community

Like every part of the computer community, the virus writers have their own community of mailing and discussion lists, web sites and BBSs. The virus writing community is more hidden and covert than most hacking communities because virus writers have more to lose than most hackers, so what anyone will find on the Internet is just the tip of the iceberg, with 90 per cent of virus writing buried deep underground for fear of exposure and prosecution.

Virus groups such as Phalken/Skism, Kefrens, Team Necrosis and phVX write tutorials and ezines, trade viruses, source code, tools, and make them all available on ftp and web sites for anyone with an interest in virus writing to download. Some of the ezines for the virus-writing community include 40hex magazine, Infected Voice, 29A, * magazine and Crypt Newsletter. If anyone wants to get accepted into the virus community, they must make sure they can code really well and then read the section in the next chapter about getting into the warez community, but trade viruses instead of warez. Hopefully by the time they've learnt to code well enough, they'll have become more interested in something more technically challenging and useful than writing viruses.