In a recent edition of the New York Times Magazine, journalist Clive Thompson profiled several computer virus writers who create code to demonstrate security holes in Microsoft software. Thompson says this is a different group from the criminal element that write the most destructive viruses and worms, such as SoBig.

THOMPSON: What the virus underground is composed of is essentially young men who are very smart but also very bored. And as anyone can tell you, that's always a loaded combination. Some of these guys are living in the
middle of nowhere in small towns in Europe or in Asia. They get online and find all these Web sites with interesting virus code, and the challenge then becomes to see if they can do something that's really cool that's never been seen before. A lot of their motive is to impress all the other guys in the virus underground by doing something so cool that they can brag about it. It's a rebel underground thing.

FT: Most of the virus writers you met live in Europe. Why is that?

THOMPSON: It's a global phenomenon. They are in Europe, Latin America, Russia, Asia, Australia. I spoke with people in all those countries. I did not encounter very many in the U.S. because the U.S. is one of the few places where the police are very active about busting cybercrime.

FT: Why do these kids write viruses?

THOMPSON: Some of it is that there's this intellectual challenge that's almost fungible -- it could be applied to anything. They could be building model planes. It's just something that really keeps them going when they're bored and young. And to a certain extent they also seem themselves as part of the immune system of the Internet. They think all this Microsoft software and a lot of other software, too is very unstable and filled with insecurities and holes. So they create viruses that expose the holes in the security, thereby forcing the software makers to clean up their act.

FT: Did you like these people?

THOMPSON: Yeah, generally I did. They're young, very smart, very funny, they're surprisingly self-effacing. Very few of them were the big braggarts you'd expect.

FT: What is at the root of our current virus epidemic?

THOMPSON: One reason that we're seeing such a boom in viruses and worms right now is that the underground is kind of mature. It's been around for ten years. There is a lot of worm code and virus code out there. It works really well, and almost anyone who wants to can go out there and snap the pieces together like Lego bricks and set it running. That means it's sort of de-skilled. There's a lot of young "script kiddies" who can just go online and take this stuff that's been posted by the authors who made it and get it running without knowing what they're doing.