Like I understand maybe wanting to get information maybe from like big government sources or something, but why do these viruses also target random people?
What is there to gain from screwing up a random person’s software?
Like is it just to be petty or are they gathering data??
In: 2
It’s largely an unfortunate coincidence created by the nature of computing technology.
Computers and computer viruses are similar in many ways to their biological counterparts. One human’s body is basically the same as any other: we all have lungs, a heart, kidneys, a brain, and so forth. A biological virus that affects one person’s body stands a good chance of being able to infect another person’s body in the same way.
Similarly, every computer has (roughly) the same design: a processor, a video card, RAM, a network interface, and a data-storage system. It’s difficult and time-consuming to tailor a computer virus to affect *only* the target system, so most virus programmers don’t bother.
It’s not necessarily an *intentional* attack on randomly-chosen systems; it’s just that a virus doesn’t always distinguish between ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ targets.
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