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Introduce yourself.

I'm Buz, 31337 virus writer extraordinaire, shock trooper of the information
war.
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How did you first get started with computers and programming?

I've had a C64 since age 8, and did bits of art in BASIC, pushing its 64k of
glorious memory to where no 64k of memory have been. The number of BASIC
commands I remember today I can count on the fingers of one hand, though :P
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What was your first experience with viruses?

I was always fascinated with viruses, but didn't know where to start. I
first got hit with Exebug, which eventually formatted my hard drive. It used
the most brilliant stealth algorithm though, which inspired me.
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Why did you start coding viruses?

Thank the author of Exebug. I was smart enough to know the difference between
a well-written virus and a poorly written virus before I ever started
programming. I started writing viruses for the sake of creating one that
had a stealth algorithm better than Exebug's, and continued on because it was
a great challenge, especially before I came on the VX scene.
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What is your personal opinion about harmful payloads, and your ethical
opinions around viruses?                                              

The public are grossly misinformed on this subjects. I say destructive
payloads don't matter either way because the greatest damage the virus causes
is always psychological. Writing a virus that's hard to detect and/or remove
is far more devastating psychologically than one that wipes your hard disk.
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You think the public is "grossly misinformed" due to the actions of the av, 
or the myths and the fear of the unknown?                                   

The public's information is half urban myths and half irresponsible 
advertising. In other words, yes. ;)
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Did you ever wind up with a job because of your experience with computers in
general?                                                                    

I wish. If anyone wants to hire the world's most hardcore virus writer, don't
hesitate to contact me. Serious inquiries only, please.
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Have you had any direct contact/conflicts with the av? What's your ethical
opinion about the av in general?                                          

They're programmers with more business sense than us. They get to wear white
shirts, sweat 9 to 5 in their cubicles and dedicate their lives to being
scam artists and employing all the charm of cartel propaganda. Like any
commercial organisation, they are dedicated to providing a semblance of a
service for the sake of their own profit, which is morally dubious to me.
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What is your view on vx groups?

Groups are great socially. Where else can you be interviewed for hanging
around on IRC all day?
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Are any of your creations in the wild?

I suspect so, but I haven't confirmed it yet.
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Where do you think the technical aspects of virus code, the AV, and the
future of viruses in general are headed?                               

Well, seems that the software industry is trying to force assembly language
out of programming. I'm guessing that despite that, assembly language will
persist so long as Intel architecture is backwards-compatible. I've heard a
rumour that Office 2000 is going to remove macros. Goodbye macro viruses? As
for the AV, they're going to be led wherever we choose to take them.
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Have you ever coded or had any interest in macro viruses?

Sure. I looked at a bunch of tutorials about macro viruses when I first came
into the scene. This was after long isolation from other virus writers, so
I had to catch up. Didn't excite me that much.
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Do you have any favorite virus writers/groups? Who and why?

Terminator Z - I learnt from his code. There's still a strong TZ influence in
my style. It's very compact and clean.

Vyvojar - heavy impact code with a noticeable lack of bugs. One_Half was one
of the most viable in-the-wild viruses of all time.

Ender, Terror-6 - a very fresh approach to coding, and some awesome viruses.
Both coders rethought the idea of polymorphism to create a new direction.

Priest, Neurobasher - those guys wrote complex viruses that worked very well,
which is no trivial task. It's like they had a point-by-point plan for
writing superviruses, which they stuck to.

Wai Chan - hey, if you read this, mail me and tell me how the hell Byway is
supposed to work. Confused the fuck outta me. ;)

VirusSoft Corp. - greets to you crazy Bulgarians! The code is great just to
look at for its weirdness value. Like someone got locked in a room with a
copy of debug, a computer and a DOS manual.

Chicago 7 - Cyber Riot rocked ass back in its day.

TridenT - big ups to them, some great viruses. Pioneers of a lot of virus
code.

Phalcon/SKISM, VLAD - thanks for the inspiration.

iKx - hi-tech code, looking forward to more from you guys.

Eastern Bloc coders - the kick-start to the whole VX scene. We wouldn't be
here without those guys.
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Have you ever considered making things like a polymorphic engines or creation
kits?                                                                        

Yup. Polymorphic engines are about as hard to detect as they are to write,
virus creation kits have been done to such a degree than noone really needs
another one employing the same approach of generating chunks of fixed code.
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Anything else you want to say to VX coders young and old? The AV community?

To the VX - keep going with whatever you do. Viruses aren't hard, they just
take practice.
To the AV - you guys have any openings for a highly paid assembly language
programmer? :P
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Any other comments?

Greets to all my friends in the scene, to ex-Invaders and to FS ;)