The malicious malware menagerie
Stop and think that every term you use has both a denotation (its actual meaning) and a connotation (all of the other meanings that ‘ride along’ with our perception of that term.) The study of semantics is concerned with this to a very deep level.
It is possible for a word to completely lose its meaning in the wash of assigned meanings (or connotations) it can pick up along the way. This is one of the major problems in computer security. Our expectations are based on image-laden terms that very few of us understand.
Lacking even the most basic understanding of what is really going on with security, users fall to the best model they have available, and that model comes not from research or reason, but from science fiction. The original virus came to us in science fiction (Shockwave Rider, a story written by John Brunner in 1975) and many of our expectations come to us from movies and television. Think of a computer virus and the image probably springs from a motion picture. A fiendish hacker has created a virus that is going to tip over an ocean liner (open a bank vault, destroy a nuclear targeting system, or bring a flying saucer down to earth.) When that virus is launched against its targeted victim, an image appears on the screen: a frog, a bomb, a bold message, a cookie monster, or a picture of DaVinci’s man. Then the real fun begins when smoke and fire pours out of the back of the infected computer system before the fiendish plot is executed.
That’s a great dramatic image, but it’s just that—a dramatic image. Viruses are seldom targeted; instead, they infect everybody and everything in their path. Rarely do viruses display any graphics at all. That was more common a decade ago, and even then it represented only a small proportion. But the most amazing little known fact is this: Very few viruses contain any destructive payload at all.