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by userbinator
2173 days ago
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Malware authors are just regular developers - they don't want to spend hours trying to hack together a C binary to dump a database when six lines of Python will do it. It used to be that malware authors (virus writers in particular) were characteristically more "hardcore" than the average developer, as in preferring native code (even handwritten Asm) and clever optimisations to make their software smaller and more "tricky", for lack of a better term. But that was when it was as a whole not as commercialised, so it's not so surprising to see that aesthetic disappear with increasing commercialisation. It's the other guy's CPU, after all ...and that might be why malware was initially more optimised than average; it spreads more easily when it's tiny and fast, doing its thing without being noticed, than if it causes a noticeable increase in system load that will prompt further investigation and lead to its discovery. I wonder when we'll see Electron being used for malware... |
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A subgroup of them still operates like that but I feel like "it used to be" might be a bit outdated. It doesn't seem new for malware authors to utilize low hanging fruits from languages to infrastructure. We've had VBA macros that are or spread malware for decades now, it used to be a pretty regular sight in the early 2000s to see low-effort payloads to be written in some high level language and utilize some random IRC server as a C&C for example. Not everything out there is some state actor level APT nightmare, with more developers in every part of the market and even more users that simply don't care enough it seems like a normal development to see stuff like this more often.