OK, so after a whole lot of procrastination and screwing around i've managed to find the time to learn assembly and hopefully get around to some virus coding etc in the near (or maybe not so near depending on how this whole assembly thing goes ). Basically im wondering if im better off learning assembly, virus coding and general exploitation in windows or linux?

Many of the apps that appear to be exploited by worms and viruses these days seems to be windows based so would it be best to learn asm in windows?

If i do decide to go with windows i'll probably go with learning MASM but if i decide on linux i'll probably go with GAS.

Thanks,
nnp

the principle of learning assembly in these two operating systems is the same. If you learn assembly for windows, then you learned an important part of assembly for linux. Because mnemonics and opcodes are universal. And for virus coding and exploit coding, it doesn't matter so much. But don't forget that there are fewer linux virii. Exploiting can be done by every operating system supporting sockets and TCP protocol. And you can write worms for any program having flaws, including Linux-based servers. Also, the best is to learn both, which one you begin with depends on you, because you will have no great problem to learn the second once you learned the first.

the overwhelming majority of viruses are written for windows, so i would recommend learning on windows. however what belgther says it is very true - i have been a windows guy all my life until last month when i installed a linux distro on a spare computer. my spare computer has now become my main computer!

i had very little trouble writing assembly code for linux (the biggest change is the move from api's to system calls).



my personal opinion on the much debated difference between linux and windows is this:

linux is a better environment (it allows you to use output from one program as input for another, so you can do what YOU want to do.... not what the programmer decides you want to do). the open source factor does make a big difference.

windows has the compatibility/number-of-users advantage. if you want to write a virus that will wreak havoc on millions of systems world wide, windows is the clear choice. the white hat equivalent of this is if you want your program to be able to be used by the masses. there are also certain programs (eg gta: sa) that i want to run, and they are released only for windows.

hope this helps -- it's a hard decision to make initially.

cheers,
suma