5 ms·
Bricking your victims machines is a very bad decision from an economical standpoint as you can't use bricked machines any more to, say send spam or hijack onlin
by pilif 14y ago
Bricking your victims machines is a very bad decision from an economical standpoint as you can't use bricked machines any more to, say send spam or hijack online banking applications via a keylogger.
Sure. Someone could be doing this for fun, but getting wide enough distribution of your malware is expensive (especially when you can't use your victims machines to spread out further).
This wouldn't even work for ransomware because that too would require the machine to run well enough to display the ransom note.
As such I personally find the scenario you described quite unlikely. Still possible of course, but also unlikely.
- 0x0 14y agoIt's happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH
- pilif 14y agoI know. But back then malware was still nearly exclusively done for "fun". Nowadays it's all about money
- 0x0 14y agoLike Stuxnet?
- gus_massa 14y agoStuxnet was not a virus designed to break random computers for "fun" (or "proof of concept"). It was a targeted weapon designed to break a specific place. Unless someone pays to cause the destruction, it's economically better for the malware authors people to create a inconspicuous botnet.
- 0x0 14y agoImagine if it turns out, in the future, such a "specific place" runs on Samsung laptops.
- Dylan16807 14y agoI'm not sure what the point of this exercise is. If the virus is as sophisticated as stuxnet it will only brick the Samsung laptops at that location, and it will have to do so only after spreading.
- 0x0 14y agoAll the replies seemed to dismiss the issue as not a problem, because who would want to brick a computer?! I'm just trying to highlight the many problems that appear when computers can be maliciously (or even accidentally) bricked by regular software.
- Dylan16807 14y agoOkay, but you should pick a more likely threat instead of making a shark attack argument.
- 0x0 14y agoI'm unfamiliar with that phrase, but are you saying CIH couldn't have happened in 2013?
- Dylan16807 14y agoSure it could. So make your argument about something like that, a widespread threat, instead of something that is very scary and widely reported in the media but also very rare, akin to the chance of dying from a shark bite.
- 0x0 14y agoThat WAS the original argument.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoPeople still write malware for fun, there's just also lots of malware made to make money as well.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 14y agoBricking a laptop might be an efficient threat to extort a ransom.