Writing Viruses for Fun, not Profit

CTO for Hire
Going viral hasn't always been considered good. Whether you're fighting the common cold, or trying to remove the ILOVEYOU computer worm from your corporate file server, two things are certain: your immune system is based on your gut health, and computers have really poor gut health.

Stopping viruses is hard. The main reason for this is that viruses are really clever. They've evolved over time to escape detection. Each previously detected virus allows the next iteration of the virus to become more resilient. The second reason is that your computer's gut health has to fight every virus, whereas each virus just has to find one immuno-compromised system to survive.

Let's work out how viruses hide. How to they sneak past the checkpoints. How they attach themselves to your system. How they fight detection, and removal. We'll look at aspects such as self-replication, cryptographic obfuscation, and touch on methods of delivery and infection.

Now that you're thinking like a virus writer, you can anticipate which areas of your applications need hardening. Just remember, we're doing it for good, not profit :)

This presentation will feature live demos of writing PHP viruses, and infection of willing targets. The theories apply equally to many languages, so an understanding of PHP is not required.

About the speaker
Ben Dechrai is a technologist, presenter, author, and hard and-core privacy advocate. When he's not on stage, or sharing his ideas and views on privacy, security, and software development, he applies these passions to the architecture and design of software systems for businesses of all sizes.

His staunch support of civil liberties saw him launch a national campaign in Australia to fight against the 2016 Census debacle. He's now working on the design and creation of privacy-respecting IoT systems for home automation.

With what spare time he has, Ben enjoys bringing communities together, by running a number of events throughout the year, from conferences and meetups, to end-of-year parties and comedy shows.

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