So I was scanning the malware rules and thinking to myself 'self, I get to choose the effect of my malware, subject to GM approval? excellent.

My character spends some time and energy each month acquiring the patches to his cracked programs. He them programs a virus to deliver the patches as a payload, and sets it loose into the matrix. Anyone who has a cracked copy of a program who also catches the virus will find that the virus updates their program for them.

Be sure to tell your GM that my character has done this, so you no longer have to pay SOTA.

Can anyone else think of fun ways to make malware that people would WANT to catch?

I'd like to propose very helpful malware that will kindly inform you of how you can improve yourself sexually.

Oh, wait...

Even better would be well-MEANING malware, like one that gave you a program option that in most cases is benificial but which can cause problems under specific circumstances.

That actually happend IRL - a worm exploiting a security weakness just to patch it up.

Technically, it is an excellent way, as viri are the only programs that can get an option that will it stop from degrading.

Yeah, just wait until it mutates into something that REMOVES patches, and causes Crash 3.0.