What motivates them to write viruses instead of playing soccer or reading books?
Basically, they think it’s a game. They don’t realize the impact. They play with computers at school and at home, and we encourage that, but we don’t encourage responsible behavior on the computer. They find a virus and tinker with it, and they don’t realize what they’re doing. These kids generally don’t have mal-intent. But keep in mind, it only takes two or three people to send out a virus, and it multiplies over and over, and it can really mess up the system. So while they may not realize the impact, the effects can be quite destructive. The other thing that motivates these kids is the media. You see a virus writer in magazines and on news shows referred to as a rocket scientist. You hear so-called experts talk about how the government and private industry should recruit these kids to do security. One time, I remember hearing about virus writers as people “on the fringe of the Internet frontier,” and I just cringed. When kids see this person being promoted as brilliant, they’ll want
