How to create a new undetectable virus in 3 easy steps

This article will demonstrate how an average PC user can create a piece of malicious software in minutes that will be undetected by all the major anti-malware scanning engines. This article is for informational purposes only and the author disclaims any responsibility for your use or misuse of any of the information contained herein. It is well-known in blackhat circles that a new piece of malware, coded from scratch, will almost always bypass signature-based malware scanners.

What is less known is that the skill needed to do this is minimal at best - an average user with no programming experience can cut and paste a few lines of code together and create a undetected malicious executable in 3 easy steps.

Most anti-virus scanners rely on a database of signatures for known viruses. Once a new virus is spread wide enough that it has been identified as malicious, the anti-virus vendors scramble to come up with a fingerprint to identify that strain of malware in the future. The obvious flaw in this process is that a new piece of malware will bypass the scanners by default, until it is widespread enough to be noticed by security researchers or picked up by a dummy node.

There is always a window of opportunity for new malware between the time of deployment and the update of the signature databases and as recent malware trends demonstrate, this window is large enough to make a profit for the authors.