This is bizarre, although I guess the juvenile attitudes should not be surprising. Apparently, recent worm authors have embedded messages in their code which indicates that the recent onslaught of new versions of old viruses and worms could now be some kind of competition between hackers:
Spiced with foul language and bad spelling, the messages portray a playground-style brawl between the authors, with the Internet worms acting as messengers. "Hey, Netsky...don't ruine (sp) our bussiness (sp), wanna start a war?" reads a message in the Bagle.J worm's code, according to Sophos. A message found in Netsky.F reads: "Skynet AntiVirus -- Bagle - you are a looser (sp)!!!!," and the recent Mydoom.G virus also includes hidden comments critical of the Netsky worm, F-Secure said.
See the full story on InfoWorld.
Fascinating stuff
Talk about unique writing spaces..."My writing space will be text exchanges within virus code." Wow.
Like the article says, though, hackers have been doing this for years. Almost all of the old software crackers installed "demos" at the front of their "warez" containing long lists of "Greetz" and the occasional insult to another group, though I always read the banter more as friendly taunts than downright nastiness. These demos often contained some simple animation and a "chip tune" soundtrack. Some of the world's most elite (and anonymous) software coders participated in these demos. Tight coding was a necessity because the finished product had to be small enough to fit on a single sector of a floppy disk (the "boot" sector).
It is true that some of the text contained foul language, but this was never the practice of the true 'leets, at least in my opinion.
These demos and their modern-day equivalents can be found at sites like scene.org. The music can be found at Nectarine Radio and various other "chiptune" sites.
silicon zoo
Seque: I've always been fascinated, too, by the molecular art in silicon chips, such as this picture of Dilbert. Interesting canvas for artistic expression.