Random American wrote:Thank you for the warning. While I understand that you discourage it, and what I'm doing is at my own risk, I don't fly blind and tend to inform myself of what I'm running before testing it. There are also types of malware I don't test or touch with a fifty foot pole because I find them to be incredibly dangerous (more so than most malware), such as things like Petya or NotPetya. While I'm not on par with a security analyst, I don't proceed if I do not know what I'm doing, and read blogs by professionals before proceeding.
I can't speak as to your qualifications, and you may very well know what you're doing, but this is not just about you. Others may come across this topic in the future, and I have a responsibility to inform them of the dangers of playing with malware.
When I say that malware is unpredictable, I mean just that. Some infections when installed will start downloading other malicious programs. Others will gain remote access to your computer and use it to distribute malware to other computers and commit other illegal activities. If you intentionally install one of these and are not well prepared, you are, in effect, "knowingly" infecting other computers and aiding criminal activities. The legality of this...
When it comes down to it, I can't tell you what to do. It is your computer, and what you do with it is up to you, but I have to warn you that should one of these "experiments" go bad and you are left with an infected computer, we won't be able to help you. Also, if you absolutely insist on using your main computer, then you should use a virtual machine within a virtual machine. Again, I must reiterate that unless you really know what you are doing, you should stay away from malware.