Any resources to learn how to create virus, worm, trojan and hack software? (For learning purposes)

Question

It seems that creating viruses, worms ... etc and hacking/cracking software is another realm of programming. It's like the Black Magic of programming. The lack of knowledge about this realm creates misconceptions. To clarify these misconceptions, a programmer should get his hands dirty with this magic. Any suggestions how to learn this magic, or at least understand how it works?

Answer 1

There's a lot of disconnected material out there. The best place to get it all at once:

"The Giant Black Book of Computer Viruses" by Mark Ludwig, American Eagle Publictions, 1995, ISBN 0-929408-10-1

An ELF Virus writing How-To exists. "ELF" is executable and linking format, the on-disk format that most of all of the free unix-a-likes like Linux, FreeBSD use. That may be your best bet, as you can set up a Linux machine with no monetary cost for the software, and so not have any second thoughts about scrubbing the disk if your experiments get out of hand.

Answer 2

Hacking is a process of find the logical error on a system, and, use it for hacker's purposes. There is no any single book on How to do hacking? If you master in technology on which which, the system runs, then, you can find the logical errors on them.

By studying assembly language, you can learn how a computer works on hardware level (010 level). This will help you to identify bugs on the system. I would suggest reading "Assembly Language Byte by Byte" written by David Y. Wen and grey G. Whipple. It is rather outdated but pay attention to the sections on file structure and work thru the book line by line, example by example. Much of what you need to know has to come thru experimentation and taking notes and paying attention. Also, learn other languages such as Perl, VBScript, and C. Do not limit yourself to just writing viruses, write Internet Worms and Trojans as well and study books on writing code and strive for excellence and bug free code.

Knowledge is the Power, but, don't release virus!

Answer 3

The hard part in all attacks is finding a way to have data executed as code.

There was recently a discussion on slashdot about the Windows Autorun, and how to make the Linux file manager execute data as code. The presentation is an ok introduction to what hoops you have to jump to make this happen.

See http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10544

Answer 4

For a wide variety of resources, and one of the best tools for building and working with exploits, check out metasploit and the linux distro backtrack. For getting started, check the following links:

• pentration-testing-basics
• metasploit wikibook