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Virus Creation Laboratory

Early computer virus creation tool

Field	Value
name	Virus Creation Laboratory
screenshot	[[Image:VCL.png	240px]]
caption	VCL Title Screen in Windows Vista
developer	Nowhere Man
operating_system	MS-DOS
latest_release_version	1.0
latest_release_date	July 5, 1992
genre	Virus creation
license	Freeware

The Virus Creation Laboratory (VCL) was one of the earliest attempts to provide a virus creation tool so that individuals with little to no programming expertise could mass-create computer viruses. VCL required a password for access, which was widely published alongside VCL. The password was "Chiba City", a likely reference to the William Gibson novel Neuromancer.

A hacker dubbed "Nowhere Man", of the NuKE hacker group, released the software in July 1992.

However, it was later discovered that viruses created with the Virus Creation Laboratory were often ineffective, as many anti-virus programs of the day caught them easily. Also, many viruses created by the program did not work at all - and often, their source codes could not be compiled, thus rendering the virus program created unusable. Despite its limitations, several viruses created with the program became widespread.

References

Wang, Wallace. (2006). "Steal this Computer Book 4.0: What They Won't Tell You About the Internet". No Starch Press.
God@rky. (1996). "God@rky's Virus Heaven Newsletter #1".
(2016). "Ethical Hacking and Countermeasures: Threats and Defense Mechanisms". Cengage Learning.
(August 16, 1992). "Nowhere Man offers computer virus revenge".
"VCL.716 Description". [[F-Secure]].
Szőr, Péter. (25 March 2005). "The Art of Computer Virus Research and Defense". Addison-Wesley Professional.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

malware-toolkits 1992-software hacking-in-the-1990s

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