Harmless and Useful Viruses Hardly Can Exist

Abstract

Some virus authors and even some antiviral experts claim that viruses and programming techniques used in them are not harmful and therefore bad. They argue that viruses which have not ability to execute any action, neither harmful nor useful, are harmless and therefore neutral; and that viruses which are able to do beneficial actions are useful and therefore good. The goal of this article is a discussion leading to a practically usable standpoint regarding the existence and feasibility of such computer viruses.

Such discussions are still not over. Neither are they purely academic, because our basic attitude towards viruses, techniques of their implementation, their originators and propagators depends on the results of the discussions. If viruses are really neutral in their nature, it is necessary to penalize only their unsuitable purpose and usage. But if we find out that viruses are bad in principle, we obtain a right to take a different, more consequential attitude towards them, even in legislation.

The four main sections of the paper are devoted to the harmful viruses, 'harmless' viruses, 'useful' viruses and to the comparison of 'useful' viruses with useful programs.

The analysis of 'harmless' viruses shows their potentially dangerous nature and finishes by the following claim:

Harmlessness of computer viruses cannot be guaranteed.

The analysis of 'useful' viruses, which are able to do useful actions, shows that they keep the hazardous nature of the previously analysed viruses and therefore they are not unambiguously useful. It is supposed that every useful action, executable by a virus, is executable by a useful program which is not a virus. A subsequent comparison of 'useful' viruses and useful programs shows several drawbacks of the 'useful' viruses and advantages of the useful programs. It finishes by the following claim:

Useful viruses are useless.

The consequences of the achieved results are summarized in the conclusion of the paper.

This paper was published in the Proceedings of The Fifth International Virus Bulletin Conference (p.193-198), held in Boston September 1995. [paper ]