How Do They Make All That Malware?

I was talking to a head research guy at an anti-virus company recently and he said that the big anti-virus firms are all getting about 50,000 new malware submissions every day. 50k! How do they, the malware authors, do it? And how is it that the AV companies actually get the malware?

Welcome to the malware generation businss model. So you want to be a malware star? Well listen now to what I say. Unfortunately I will be somewhat vague, but the fact is that anyone who's technically competent and has the will to do so can fine the missing pieces of the puzzle I'll lay out.

First, very little malware is lovingly hand-crafted from scratch these days. The name of the game in defeating anti-virus software is volume. You generate huge numbers of slight variants of a malicious program, do things like use different packers on the executable, and some end up different enough that the anti-malware products can't detect them.