Why people makes viruses ?
82311
people make viruses to outwit those who are selling anti-viruses or to sell anti-virus themselves. They give you the sickness for free- they charge you for the medicine.
11820
It appears that no major viruses have occured yet, as Macs are not as widely distributed as PC's.  Thus, there is much less incentive for making a Mac virus.  However, there have been a few security vulnerabilities that have been patched.  If and when the market share of Macs increases, the number of viruses and other threats will increase as well.
108305
Had to chuckle at this one.. Besides the fact that it totally f*cks up entire corporations, slows down or stops a form of communication which is the next best thing to a phone call, and causes people to spend hours banging their heads against their computers ???? Nothing...\n\nIf you can create a virus, make yourself a million working for a tech corp. If you're that flipping smart, do some good with it.
493756
A virus needs a cell to replicate itself. You see viruses have absolutely no ability to reproduce on there own. They basically "hijack" a cell and then the cell makes a copy of the virus.
491156
Viruses come in all shapes and danger levels.  There is everything from trojans to everday viruses.  Most of these either alter data on your computer or they gather data from your computer for a certain person or company.  Either way they are dangerous.  There are some major ones taht alter boot data and cause your computer to no longer be able to start up properly.  Many of them some from websites without you knowing or from downloads (which you never download from someone that you do not know).  Get good antivirus software and keep it up to date and you should have no problems with it.\n\nOh, and most boot-up viruses do nto go away by reformatting your hard drive as they will "hide" in your RAM chips.  There are some sneaky ones out there, so make sure that you keep a good antivirus program on your computer, keep it active, and keep it up to date.
302688
There are differnet kinds of viruses.Some viruses could affect the system files and casue the system to behave unexpectedly.While ohers could write corrupt data to your hard disk and try to steal information.
925616
I agree! If they r gonna make viruses for em' then they better damn well make vaccines for them! lol
816100
A virus (Latin, poison) is a microscopic particle that can infect the cells of a biological organism.They can't multiply on their own, so they have to invade a 'host' cell and take over its machinery in order to be able to make more virus particles. \nViruses consist of genetic materials (DNA or RNA) surrounded by a protective coat of protein. They are capable of latching onto cells and getting inside them. \n\nBacteria are organisms made up of just one cell. They are capable of multiplying by themselves, as they have the power to divide. Their shapes vary, and doctors use these characteristics to separate them into groups. \n\nBacteria exist everywhere, inside and on our bodies. Most of them are completely harmless and some of them are very useful. But some bacteria can cause diseases, either because they end up in the wrong place in the body, or simply because they are 'designed' to invade us. \n\nViral and bacterial infections are both spread in basically the same ways. \n   - A person with a cold can spread the infection by coughing and/or sneezing.\n   - Bacteria or viruses can be passed on by touching or shaking hands with another person.\n   - Touching food with dirty hands will also allow viruses or bacteria from the intestine to spread. \n   - Body fluids such as blood, saliva and semen can contain the infecting organisms and transmission of such fluids, for example by injection or sexual contact, is important, particularly for viral infections like hepatitis or AIDS.\n\n\nAn example of a viral infection would be Chickenpox (Varicella) and an example of a bacterial infection would be Pertussis (Whooping Cough) .
119675
They want to feel important by spreading one of their creations though peoples computers. I bet its a huge thrill to see how easily people can be exploited and without notice. Sometimes its used as resources to post annonymous information or ddos a victim.\n\n\nWorms and Trojans can be used to steal your creditcard number and other monetary information.\n\nSpyware because they get marketing information about what the average person spends time doing online and how they learn about it.
502605
Viruses can't replicate on their own so you have to do it in a cell culture.  Look up "cell culture" and you will find lots of information as this has been done for quite a few years now.
15413
I doubt it. people write viruses to cause maximum trouble, and with so few macs that's not as good a medium as Windows. Plus lastest Mac's system is based in Linux/Unix, which is less susceptible to viruses.
164523
Is this for a school project or are you hoping to create a virus and get it in the news?  I am a little hesitant pointing people to this type of information.
5591
Without going into the ethical aspects, there are two issues that come to mind:\n- Yes, creating viruses artificially would indeed boost the need for antiviruses. If nothing else, it would let them claim they block "more viruses than the competition". \n- But the most important asset that antivirus firms have is not their product. It's the trust their customers put into them. If that trust disappears, the firm might as well close its doors.\n\nConsidering the huge risk an AV company would take if it started creating and spreading viruses for the sake of drumming up some business, it seems unlikely any healthy company would chance it.\n\nHowever, by following a similar line of thought, Enron should never have happened. \nYet it did.\n\nPS: Many AV-matched patterns are patterns that match "lab viruses", aka theorical exercises that have never actually spread in the wild. It is plausible (likely) some of those were created by AV employees in the process of investigating and keeping sharp on virus technology. Considering they never endangered anyone, I don't think of it as a problem. However, they helped sharpen their employee skills, and possibly resulted in a better AV product, so, indirectly, they may have helped sell their product.
65416
Definitely the easiest way is to grab something that someone else has written and modify it a little.  In the "biz", people that do this are known as "script kiddies" since they don't have any real knowledge but only how to follow a script.\n\nMost more "original" viruses exploit an existing problem with an existing program or operating system.  Quite often it's due to a "buffer overrun" vulnerability, where the OS allows an application to overwrite memory that doesn't belong to it.  If you're careful, you can overwrite the memory in such a way that the system will interpret it as operating instructions and execute it.  Once you can get it to do that, the system is pwned!!1!
675394
virus is an unwanted harmful program.many programs are useful (eg Internet Explorer,WinZip,Winamp) but some are made do harm.to protect us Antiviruses,Firewalls and other softwares/hardwares are used .
115654
People often confuse viruses with spyware. Check out Microsoft AntiSpyware.
683346
they can spread viruses and they can help spammers collect addresses. some people are bored and haven't discovered yahoo answers yet.