EvilZone

1) I learned Java first and I hate it.
2) You should start with C first.  You don't start with Calculus do you? You start with the basic algebra etc. And then learn C++ and then move on to other languages.
3) Please keep your opinion to yourself when you are clearly just stating a personal belief with no evidence to support or disprove anything.
4) The Java VM is pretty terrible, why would you ever want to use it besides true cross platform compatibility?  Also true cross platform compatibility can be accomplished through writing minimal elf loaders for every platform and then writing all your programs as plugins for the loader.  Then, you have true cross platform compatibility as well (at least for one architecture.... but that's not so bad).

1)It was just a thought
2)Both approaches are pretty much the same when you consider that when learning c++ you pretty much have to learn c before you learn object coding
3)It was obviously an opinion. I was answering which language you should learn first, unless there is some study I don't know about everyone who answers that question is giving their opinion.
4)Agreed. And, that actually sounds like an interesting approach.
 

Are there any currently active open source malware projects?

Word of advice, don't start with python!! Programming with python too long will make every other language seem tedious and will make learning a new language like c++ or java hell. I started with c++ which is a great language to start with but I would probably recomend starting with Java just because most programmers really dislike Java if it isn't the first language you learn. Then, if you wan't to keep working inside the Java VM you can learn Groovy(or jython)!

Thanks for the input everybody! I will probably at least toy around with trying to rebuild some of the lowlevel zeus functionality in python (e.g. HttpSendRequest hooking and process injection) and see if I get anywhere for the learning experience if for nothing else. I actually wrote and compiled(py2exe) a keylogger in python that took a screenshot eveytime a key was clicked(needless to say, it took forever to type anything...) so I am not going into this project without a good amount of experience.

@Ragehottie is that your blog?? I ran across it about a month ago. Big fan. Is there any way I could get a copy of that rootkit source?

Python is perfectly legitimate language to write a botnet in. There is very little you can c++ that you can't do in python and then py2exe into an executable. In fact its a better language to write a botnet in.

I'm considering converting/rebuilding the Zeus botnet in python and hosting it as an open source python project. Is there any support for this? BTW, the reason I want to do this is to increase development time(python programming tends to be far faster than c++) and to expand the capabilitys of the Zeus framework(I.e. embed a javascript or lua scripting engine, bitcoin mining, exploit database, etc.) I also want to make a large move toward peer to peer networking. Any comments, questions, support, etc.. would be amazing!! And let me know if anyone is interested in getting involved!