Sophos Cloud Optix
Whilst checking out a very basic packer recently, one of my colleagues in the lab spotted something in the version information that led him to a malware writing forum. Actually ‘malware writing forum’ is being overly kind, it’s more a sort of script kiddie after school club. Anyway, the point being while he was there he spotted something almost unheard of. A girl! an actual real life girl. With makeup and everything. I know, my reaction was exactly the same as his, and seemingly the same as everyone else on the forum. “It can’t be a real girl, it must be a lad in disguise”.
The username “dollygirl” and a userpic of a young teenage girl isn’t enough to convince anyone of anything these days, which of course is a good thing when you think about it. It’s kind of comforting that the kids are cynical here about believing anything they’re told about the identity of an unknown user. The funny thing is the way the argument goes. I obviously can’t post the link as these forums are universally a Bad Thing, but here for your entertainment is the gist of the argument;
- girl: “I need help writing a visual basic packer”
- user1: “ur a girl? pm me!
- user2: “that’s no girl that’s a pervert with a girl avatar”
- user3: “it’s a n00b boy pretending to be a girl”
- user4:” this is a boy forum girls don’t like computers”
At this point dollygirl plays the webcam card, and supposedly writes down the username of one of the guys and posts a pic of herself with it. Proof? well it made us stop in our tracks a bit. Of course there’s nothing to say that it’s not a lad getting a friend to play along.
The point of all this is of course that female malware authors really do seem to be so rare that we all take a lot of convincing that one really exists. I always like to think that it’s largely because we have better things to do.
Of course there’s one female virus writer we know about, mostly through her displays of affection for our very own Graham Cluley.