The authors of the latest MyDoom email worm variants have embedded a secret message inside their malicious code that asks for a job in the anti-virus industry, security researchers have discovered.
Hidden inside the MyDoom-V and MyDoom-U code is a message: "We searching 4 work in AV industry," which, according to Sophos, does not get displayed on infected users' computers.
The unorthodox job application was not well received by established antivirus companies. "It's hard to tell if the creators of these new versions of the MyDoom worm are being serious, but there is no way that anybody in the anti-virus industry would touch them with a bargepole," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
"It's very simple – if you write a virus, we will never ever employ you. Not only is it deeply unethical to write malicious code, but it raises issues as to whether you could ever be trusted to develop the software which protects millions of users around the world from attack every day."
The MyDoom-V and MyDoom-U worms is spread via email in the form of a file attachment that, once activated by unwitting users, attempts to download a backdoor Trojan horse called Surila. But Cluley said the skills required to write reliable anti-virus software are very different from those shown by a virus writer.
"Anti-virus software is much more difficult to write than a computer virus," he said. "Anti-virus developers have to ensure that their software works reliably, detecting more than 90,000 computer viruses on a wide variety of operating systems and network configurations without making mistakes or causing problems. Virus writers don't care if their code crashes or causes incompatibilities - you don't have to be a genius to write a virus."
