What is being done about punishing virus givers?

What are the laws like and why done they do more to punish those jerks?

I would like to know that as well.

Firstly, you have to find the creators to begin with.

There have been a few that have been caught and punished, but overall - it's very difficult to trace and conclusively prove the culprits guilt.

However, even when the origin is known, it's often outside a punishable jurisdiction. Different countries have different laws.

In some countries, the law is far too lenient to warrant any deterrence and other affected countries have zero power in bringing the culprit to justice.

546 Inspiron said:

What are the laws like and why done they do more to punish those jerks?

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When found they are summarily drawn and quartered.

There are millions of psychopaths out there.

There are millions of computer users out there.

There is an intersection of these, the psychopaths who use computers.

When they are caught, as others above have said, it depends on jurisdiction as to what is done. For these psycopaths, we can't do the things that make us feel secure on airplanes, like ensuring anyone with the appropriate skin tone or name is screened more carefully... So, the best we can do is use anti-virus measures, and hope that the ones bright enough to bypass the protections get a conscience before they do it.

They must be quarantined.

well .. unless it's a really major virus .. almost nobody cares about them.

well some involved in involving online scams(read involving $$$) using botnets etc are being apprehended at least.
Spain busts ring accused of infecting 13 mln PCs | Reuters

Wiseguys Indicted in $25 Million Online Ticket Ring | Threat Level | Wired.com

The Chinese can hack at will so I dont see much help in busting the a few local ones anyway.

They need to do something about it. It is a ruthless crime that needs to be dealt with and probably will be when their own computers are compromised.

The only thing I can think of is if MS did a full rewrite of the WIndows OS< then had compatibility mode in a sandbox kind of like XPmode, but it would be necessary for all programs that have not been rewritten for the new os.
then it would be incredibly more difficult to write a virus, with a slight chance of impossibility.

It's a shame that PC's don't have a built-in feature, where when a hacker directly releases and infests somebody else's computer from their computer, your computer sends it right back to their's and tacks on it's own bit of nasty that kills their system 100% (being, of course, non-transferrable to other's computers which have also been hijacked by the same person or virus as nobody would have a computer left standing lol). That would cool this crap off pretty quickly in my opinion - then again, many might just get smart and opt for using public-access systems to do their dirty work instead from then on, making it all the more difficult for big-time scammers to be busted.

Truthfully, unless Microsoft did away with the registry and made their file structure a similar principle to MAC and Linux, I don't see this kind of threat ever going away. So long as there's a registry keeping everything in a solid, buggy compartment of a system which becomes unstable all by itself over time anyway, viruses and all those other nasties will remain. It's just the one major drawback to being a PC user - but the many benefits outweigh this greatly, in my opinion.

546 Inspiron said:

They need to do something about it. It is a ruthless crime that needs to be dealt with and probably will be when their own computers are compromised.

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my word! It sucks getting hacked like at least twice per month like me, and always the extra work I have because of these jerks, not to mention that I can never ever get a feeling of at least halfway security while using my windows... no I must always be aware for the next attack.

Hell yeah, they really should do something about it. Why dont they bring out an international law to surpress hackers? an international law which forces every country to sneak up and catch hackers, and give them the punishment those jerks deserve. Hacking would at least decrease greatly by doing so. Well next problem actually is windows itself, as windows does not really have and administrator modus, theyre toying with you and it may look like windows has a administrator modus but it doesnt while linux really does work as administrator. Also windows uses dll and exe.files which are a: unsecure and b often cause errors. Also the fact that windows uses a registry gives hackers a much easier and better access to your pc, thats because windows works mainly with the hard disk while linux works with the memory mainly, so linux doesnt need a registry like windows does. And last the other crap with security risks that comes from windows, like java, dcom, unpn and the endless list of all the rest of it. No wonder one gets hacked like mad under windows, for a hacker windows is a playing field... its so easy, there are so many ways to hack ones system, its more like a childs play for them then a actuall challenge, which i think should be. It should be a challenge for a hacker to hack a users system like under linux, linux definitely is a BIG challenge for nearly any hacker, but windows isnt even a small challenge it tends to be a childs play.

I had linux for 8 months, hell of complicated and hard also, because it was new for me and it used stuff I didnt know, also it was build up differently. Surfing, media was no problem at all after getting a grip of linux a week, but what till the end wouldnt work for me and gave me many errors and frustrated moments was games and 3d animations, or generally windows stuff and programms which had to be emulated either of wine or cedega, while cedega is much easier it unfortunately isnt free. Well i gave up trying to get games running on linux, it wouldnt work properly and if it did like warcraft(yeah i somehow really managed to get warcraft and also fable to run under linux, dont ask me exactly how but after a lot of work i did it) it would run with either more crashes or certain stuff like trainers etc. wouldnt work properly. But in all the 8 months beeing online with linux, i didnt even get 1 single attack, what the hell? I mean as soon as im on windows again instantly all fes days hack, hack, hack, hack. On linux having an antivirus was actually useless, I had antivir running on linux but until the end it didnt even find 1 single threat, as soon as im having windows again my antivir goes alarm all few days...

So in my opinion its not only the international laws should be changed reducing the amount of hackers drastically, but also goddamn microsoft could start doing something about theyre more then poor security. I mean the security of windows realy is a laugh.

International laws are useless. Abiding by them is voluntary by each nation.

Little Darwin said:

like ensuring anyone with the appropriate skin tone or name is screened more carefully... .

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comments like this have no business being made.

just had spyware on my laptop somehow glary utilities found it lol

gramdmajim said:

Little Darwin said:

like ensuring anyone with the appropriate skin tone or name is screened more carefully... .

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comments like this have no business being made.

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I apologize!

It was not meant to be offensive to any group other than the ones who target based on appearance. My emphasis was meant to be on practices that only make people feel safe without providing any real increase in safety. That is at least marginally apparent if you look at this phrase in the context in which I used it. But in reading it again, it really didn't add value to the discussion, so I do sincerely apologize to all readers.

CarlTR6 said:

International laws are useless. Abiding by them is voluntary by each nation.

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Then more and more nations should be willing to catch them or hand them out. I mean theyre criminals, one of the typ which I would definitely put under mid to strong crime, maybe also based on the threat and the damages they cause. Still hacking should never be handled a light crime. They also do nothing good for the nation in which theyre hacking, theyre just useless criminals. What sense does it make to let them roam free? Extra costs by punishing or finding them? then do a bounty or something, and take the money back from hackers who got caught to get the costs back those guys cause, that would be even more harsh but hell I think they do deserve it.

Shapeless said:

CarlTR6 said:

International laws are useless. Abiding by them is voluntary by each nation.

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Then more and more nations should be willing to catch them or hand them out. I mean theyre criminals, one of the typ which I would definitely put under mid to strong crime, maybe also based on the threat and the damages they cause. Still hacking should never be handled a light crime. They also do nothing good for the nation in which theyre hacking, theyre just useless criminals. What sense does it make to let them roam free? Extra costs by punishing or finding them? then do a bounty or something, and take the money back from hackers who got caught to get the costs back those guys cause, that would be even more harsh but hell I think they do deserve it.

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I don't disagree with what you are saying; it's just that international laws are not the answer. Can you see Nigeria, China, Russia, etc signing on to such a law - and enforcing it? I, too, wish all nations would go after hackers, spammers, perpetrators of fraud, and those that sabotage.

CarlTR6 said:

Shapeless said:

CarlTR6 said:

International laws are useless. Abiding by them is voluntary by each nation.

Click to expand...

Then more and more nations should be willing to catch them or hand them out. I mean theyre criminals, one of the typ which I would definitely put under mid to strong crime, maybe also based on the threat and the damages they cause. Still hacking should never be handled a light crime. They also do nothing good for the nation in which theyre hacking, theyre just useless criminals. What sense does it make to let them roam free? Extra costs by punishing or finding them? then do a bounty or something, and take the money back from hackers who got caught to get the costs back those guys cause, that would be even more harsh but hell I think they do deserve it.

Click to expand...

I don't disagree with what you are saying; it's just that international laws are not the answer. Can you see Nigeria, China, Russia, etc signing on to such a law - and enforcing it? I, too, wish all nations would go after hackers, spammers, perpetrators of fraud, and those that sabotage.

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Let me tell you a small story. Have you heard of the gphone virus aka the New Folder.exe? Somehow ( I am not going to disclose how, just assume it was luck, pluck and abit of reverse engg on my part ) I came to trace the writer of this nasty malware. Then my geek friend ( I couldnt have done it ) got hold of the " ak%c4kh{3}'s.<3.90:£> " mailbox password. By the combination of the password alone you can see the complexity of that malware writer's thoughts. And can you guess why that guy wrote it? To infect his girlfriend's pc !
And see how many of us suffered ! ! !
Well last but not the least, my friend traced the mailbox holder to Barbados. Who knows, what sinster malware is he writing now?
P.s. He changed his mail id after 10hrs when he found that we deleted all his mails :'(