Talk:List of computer viruses

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[edit] Organisation

I removed the redirect to Talk:Timeline of notable computer viruses and worms. I'm not quite sure why it was there in the first place?

In any case, I have a few suggestions to make. Bear with me, as they may be excessively technical, but it's 3 AM and I'm not terribly coherent.

  • I think we're working with too much information here. All of this information will not fit on one page. I think a name, a discovery date (year if necessary), a subtype, some WildList reference, and notes would be sufficient. Information like author, point of isolation, etc. consumes too much space and is kind of trivial. No reason not to leave that information to its own page.
  • Instead of alphabetically, it might be better to sort by virus type. That way, we don't have to worry about those prefixes that were never standardised. I would suggest these categories: Windows file, Email, Macro, DOS file, boot, Mobile OS (PalmOS+mobile phones - whatever), and Other. I'm not entirely sure what to do about multipartite viruses - any ideas there? (By the way, it might be a good idea to get a categorisation system down before anything too major is done).
  • I'm looking down the current list, and there's already misinformation. I am reasonably sure that A and A does not infect under Win9x. Only a few DOS file infectors, such as Cascade, do this. This has never been well-documented, and the primary OS (e.g. DOS in the case of A and A) should be good for now. I'm not sure we need to list every operating system a virus can run on. This gets us into dangerous waters[[1]].
  • I'd like to see some way of rating how common a virus is. After all, the Probert Encyclopedia has left us with a fascinating and wonderful but dreadfully outdated list of DOS minutia virus. When's the last time any of us have had an outbreak of Scott's Valley? Some use of the WildList[2] might be in order.
  • A bot would rock, although I have no idea how they work. Especially with those boring DOS file infectors. There are, what, 10,000 of those?
  • Should we attempt to follow naming conventions[3]? Obviously, in cases like Jerusalem (violates the geographic rule), it's impossible to, but overall I'd like to see the DOS viruses use the "must" rules as much as possible (although cases like AGI-Plan, violating the company name rule, may be a lost cause).

Sorry if my comment breaks style guidelines. I'm still getting used to this. I look forward on expanding this project. --Trafton 10:50, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

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