Malware writers "copyright" work

IN TRULY IRONIC FASHION hackers have decided that their precious viruses need theft protection, and have come up with a way to 'copyright' their malware, promising harsh repercussions for anyone who violates their terms.

Scaremonger Symantec said it discovered the bizarre virus licensing agreement, attached to a malicious suite of software available online.

The document, apparently written in Russian, warns the hackers' morally deficient clients that they must not attempt to redistribute the suite, make any attempt to look at or figure out the underlying code (shurely impossible to ignore if you’re a hacker?), hand it over to anti-virus companies, use it to manipulate or control other hacker botnets or refuse to pay for the software updates.

If hacker buyers refuse to comply, the document threatens that the malicious code makers themselves would report the perpetrator to the anti-virus companies, giving them all the information they would need to neutralise the bot network created by their software.

The threat is a strange one, because by snitching on their clients, the malicious code writers draw attention to themselves, and give anti-virus companies the relevant information they need to shut down or neutralise them, too. Sort of a double-edged sword.

But it seems that the hacker clients have also copped on to the fact that the threat can go both ways, as not a one of them seems to be taking any heed of the non legally binding agreement, tagged onto a software suite clearly redistributed and available for free download.

Zulfikar Ramzan, senior principal security researcher with Symantec Corp, told AP: "What's funny is they put more effort into their EULA (end-user license agreement) than traditional software companies might".

It seems that the old adage 'honour amongst thieves' doesn’t quite hold up when it comes to hackers. µ