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IT myths: Who writes the viruses?
An age old myth put to rest once and for all?

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Wednesday 25 June 2003

Ask anybody - as we have been doing - what the biggest IT myths are and one answer crops up time and time again: Anti-virus companies write viruses.

The argument is that they do it to keep themselves in business and to keep their products on top of the IT director's wish-list. By writing viruses themselves they can have a ready-made antidote available in seconds, which can be deployed in exchange for cash and the occasional pat on the back.

It's a story which Gene Hodges, president of Network Associates, has heard a thousand times - but not one he has much time for.

"We have never written of designed a virus. Period. We simply could not. We would lose so much trust from a market confidence point of view that we simply couldn't - it would be the end of our business. It would only take word to get out - and it would get out - and it would be 'goodbye' to our customers as they all move over to Symantec or one our other rivals."

"This is something our programmers hear when they go out with our customers. And they're response is always the same - they would say 'You should know we don't write viruses, because if we did your network would be a smoking ruin'," he added.

Hodges also believes that the pride of the anti-virus community means they would never associate themselves with the very people they are trying to combat.

"These guys hate virus writers and hackers. We don't want to have anything to do with them and they don't want to be beaten. It's a manhood thing."

But underlying the whole issue is the fear of the AV vendor that revelations of this kind would be catastrophic to their business. "If this was going on then the aggressive press would have found out by now and we would have been held hostage," said Hodges.

Hodges also reiterated that this need to distance the anti-virus community from anybody with a history of virus writing is the reason why no companies would touch graduates from Calgary University's controversial virus writing course or anybody who has ever written viruses - whether for academic or malicious reasons.