Finally there is the ethical side - and the bottome line there is simply
that this is unacceptable behaviour.
And a couple of things you did not mention..
Putting aside the ethical issues (just for a short moment) there is also
the issue of a virus still being malicious software. Why? Not getting
into term and definition arguments - it does something that the user did
not ask for, on the user's machine.
Say we don't care... controlling replication of malicious code is
extremely difficult. When attempted before, it caused the falling of
entire networks, just last year.
Also.. who said viruses are bug free or well written? A programming
error of some sort.. say.. even a buffer overflow could be disastrous.
And how the heck is someone REALLY supposed to control how, when and
where a single sample spreads. It never worked. It has been attempted
more than just a few times.
Add to that the fact that it doesn't actually solve the problem, and you
still haven't covered everything of why it is a bad thing.
Back to ethical - writing viruses is simply a no-no.
Gadi.
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