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It seems the VX groups are all destined to die out slowly, viruses for fun, learning and definitely not profit are on the way out. Like many other things its become a commercial market.<\/p>\n
The top infector this month being Adware for the first time ever, not a virus. 29A is one of the old skool groups that has been around for a long time, they have quite some accolades for ‘firsts’ in virus development.<\/p>\n
29A, hexadecimal for 666, is an underground VXer collective known for creating the first Win 2000 virus, the first 64bit virus, and early examples of mobile malware that infected devices such as PDAs.<\/p>\n
The group also published information on how to create viruses through an irregular magazine, seven editions of which were republished on its website. The magazine contained examples of virus source code and tutorials on how to write malware.<\/p>\n
The group has been in decline since its heyday at the turn of the century. A steady exodus of members over recent years accelerated early this year as it emerged that GriYo, Vecna, and Z0MBiE left the collective.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I guess within 5-10 years most hacking and VX groups will die out as the business gets taken over by people doing it for purely commercial reasons, accelerating development to make more money from infecting people with simplistic variants of proven strains of worms and trojans.<\/p>\n
As previously reported, other less well known VXer groups are dying the death, a development symptomatic of changes in the malware market. Profit has replaced mischief, intellectual curiosity, or a desire to make a name for yourself as the motive for creating malware.<\/p>\n
Traditional virus writers have drifted away from the scene to be replaced by more shadowy coders creating sophisticated Trojans aimed at turning an illicit profit. Enforcement action against virus writers has acted as a further disincentive for hobbyists, at least.<\/p>\n
Instead of getting proof of concept malware from the likes of 29A, we’re dealing with the Storm Worm Trojan and other sophisticated “professionally developed” botnet clients.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The interesting malware is likely to die out, proof of concept and doing things because they are difficult are not very profitable. The control channels and bots are likely to get more sophisticated, but the infectors will remain based around social engineering and hiding from AV signatures.<\/p>\n
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