[icefox]

> It's a bit like the Fermi Paradox.

During the late 90's and early 00's I often wondered why with all of the Microsoft hate why someone didn't create a simple virus that did something destructive like just format windows hard drives. There must have been other incentives at play that caused this to never occur. Perhaps in the same logic if you can infect every Tesla it is more valuable to not crash them, but instead scrub the data and sell that back to [insert company] or something.

If there was ever something that would cause a formal programming guild to sprout I would be willing to bet that it would form its roots around security.

[sp332]

There were plenty of destructive viruses. Some (e.g. CIH) would erase the MBR of the disk making it unbootable. Others like ILOVEYOU would overwrite user's data directly. Blaster specifically had a message about Windows' poor security and tried to DDoS Windows Update.

Sometimes viruses are written to by self-limiting. MyDoom, which caused about 10% of all email traffic for a time, was programmed to deactivate on a certain date. Also once viruses get to a certain level of infamy they get a lot of attention. Blaster was mitigated in just days, so by the time it started its DDoS it was already mostly wiped out.

[marcosdumay]

Even more relevant, Internet access wasn't common back then, and the only large-range virus vector was the slow paced sneaker-net.

[Piskvorrr]

From the other virology: a virus that outright kills its host doesn't get very far. A virus that keeps the host limping along, creating copies of the virus in the process, is far more likely to spread...which is, IIRC, precisely what happened in the early 2000s. (And indeed, what would be the incentive for disabling Windows hosts? "W1nd0z3 suxx0rz" would barely count as one, given the lack of general-public alternatives at the time - the afflicted would pay a tech grunt to repave with the same Windows again, been there, done the repaving.)