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I'm just curious. I always hear about C or assembly being the language of choice for viruses, and I wonder if any of the more arcane languages like lisp or scheme can be used for it too

Kefka
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Yes - the important thing is not the language but whether the environment in which it runs has permission to modify files.

The AutoCAD W32/Bursted virus was written in a Lisp variant called AutoLISP.

See also:

Community
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Mark Byers
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I doubt many viruses are written in assembly. As for Lisp and Scheme, if there is access to the system then there's the possibility of writing a virus.

Are you looking for advice as to what language to choose? ;-)

David Heffernan
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    "I doubt many viruses are written in assembly". I'd leave this out. It's pretty common to exploit buffer overruns by poking code into the buffer. An assembler may be used to prepare this code. – S.Lott Jan 09 '11 at 20:38
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Not exactly a virus, but here's an interesting interview with a coder who used TinyScheme in some adware.

JasonFruit
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