Size Matters To Virus Writers

from the smaller-and-smaller-and-smaller... dept

If you learned to program back in the days before gigabyte hard drives, you might remember a time when coding efficiency mattered. You actually wanted to make your programs as small as possible so they didn't take up too much room. Of course, hard drives started expanding, and bloated software became standard. Still, it appears there's one area where small programs rule: malicious worms and viruses. Apparently, all those worms and viruses bouncing back and forth are mostly under 20kb - showing just how easy it is to compromise a system. In fact, with such efficient code, worm writers are placing malicious code within their malicious code, and are still able to keep it nice and compact (and easier to slip in under the radar).
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  • identicon
    Mike (not that Mike), 17 Mar 2004 @ 12:46pm

    Not to be pedantic

    and the author of the article made the same mistake, but the 'b' in 'kb' should be capitalized. 'B' == bytes, and 'b' == bits.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Matt, 18 Mar 2004 @ 6:19am

      Re: Not to be pedantic

      also:
      Windows XP Home Edition requires approximately 1,572,864 kilobytes

      seems a new definition of approximate..

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    progger, 18 Mar 2004 @ 2:08am

    Size

    Why do you think that coding efficient no longer matters because we have big discs and lots of memory? A well written, efficient program will always be better than a hunk of cruddy bloatware!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    aNonMooseCowherd, 18 Mar 2004 @ 8:59am

    wrong reason

    The main reason for keeping programs small was the memory usage, not the disk space required to store them. This was especially true before virtual memory was commonly available.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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