CRYPT NEWSLETTER 28 November 1994 Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.) Media Critic: Mr. Badger (Andy Lopez) INTERNET: 70743.1711@compuserve.com Urnst.Kouch@comsec.org COMPUSERVE: 70743,1711 [The Crypt Newsletter is a monthly electronic magazine which features stories on computers, society, science and technology. Some satirical content included.] IN THIS ISSUE: Songs of the cyber-doomed on the Fidonet . . . Mr. Badger's horrible day and the techno-fiends of Xerox PARC . . . Reviewed: Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" (Random House) . . . Floyd Kemske's "Vampire Management" is edited on the Internet . . . "The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey Into the Underground" arrives. SONGS OF THE CYBER-DOOMED: THE 1 MILLION-POUND SHITHAMMER AND THE FIDONET [Portions of the following article are tasteless and profane. You might want to delete this file now if these kinds of things offend you.] "The psychopath [is] literally an excommunicant in the matter of socially acceptable goals . . . Consequently, all his activities . . . are restraint-free, sometimes strikingly bizarre, always unappreciative of consequences." --Robert Lindner, "Rebel Without a Cause" Sooner or later, everyone on-line gets to savor the experience of the electronic mail bomb: nuisance collections of ersatz messaging usually designed to shock and annoy the easily irritated. Recently, the Fidonet's Virus Information special interest group has been paralyzed by an almost continuous stream of pornographic mail bombs which have crowded out the regular content of the public messaging carried by the electronic mail echo. Electronic mail bombs of this nature are routinely disguised as legitimate electronic mail packets using a hacker software tool, appropriately named, in this case, BOGUS. They are dispersed through the network by the dial-up of poorly secured Fidonet bulletin board systems and anonymous ramming of the packets into the attacked systems' mail queues. The mail queues are automated and subsequently distribute the dubious mail to other systems in a chain of cascades which, optimally, passes the mail around the world. The mail bombs we're discussing have been jammed into unsecured systems in Israel, South Africa, France, Germany, Scandinavia and assorted points throughout the United States, generating hundreds of e-mail packets of X-rated electronic insults. All of this sounds rather dry but it becomes singularly interesting when one begins to look at the history of a confessed Fidonet mail-bomber, the self-styled cyber-terrorist, Paskell "Geno" Paris. Paris, a nurse by day, ran a bulletin board system in Oklahoma City in 1993 which flip-flopped between the names Vortex and The Oklahoma Institute of Virus Research. It was part of network of systems which had become inextricably mixed-up with the Fidonet bulletin boards devoted to spreading advertising for shareware anti-virus software. However, this aim not what Paris had in mind, much to the annoyance of the software developers and their representatives. When not in the mainstream mail areas of the Fidonet, Paris would call other systems using aliases like Colostomy Bagboy. He published a profane, hideously violent electronic magazine known as Vortex. Vortex was an oil stain covering the windshield to those used to driving leisurely down the center lane of the information highway, or what there was of it on the Fidonet. Vortex was also hysterically funny. If you didn't know what you were doing, reading Vortex was also kind of like walking through a minefield. Colostomy Bagboy included tips and advice for playing with viruses and other types of software boobytraps, which, if followed, would result in the inexperienced corrupting the data on their computers. In Vortex, the editor explained his world view. The networks were a silicon vortex, Colostomy Bagboy proclaimed. His philosophy was a metaphysical pseudo-serious gobble which combined junk pop culture, received wisdom and an assortment of fictions flogged by the likes of William Gibson, "Dune's" Frank Herbert, Anne Rice and Steven Donaldson. "The VORTEX is this and more . . . ," wrote Colostomy Bagboy. "[In] this medium there is only continued flux, the pursuit of information, and joyful destruction. Steven Donaldson's Despiser is our only god and anarchy is our only goal." The Despiser, or Lord Foul, was the arch villain in Donaldson's Illearth War series of books, a sort of cheap rip-off of J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord of The Rings." Paul Mua'Dib, the hero of the book "Dune," also tended to get invoked as spiritual shaman in Paskell Paris's Vortex. However, Paris was no cyberpunk, he said. He hated the word. "Cyberpunk is the term that [William] Gibson gave that highly [trained] group of phreakers/hackers in his hi-tech fictional world," he wrote in Vortex. "Man, a punk is somebody who bends over and takes it up the ass. If that's what you feel like you are then fine, power to you. Personally, I have always liked the term . . . 'Technopath.' "There are many ways to obtain godhood in The SILICON VORTEX, however, if you can leave the false worldly constrains of ethics and morals behind . . . Creation is always nice, but true power rests in the power to destroy," continued the hacker. "The information contained within [Vortex] . . . will give you the ability to tap into that dark side of yourself that likes to cause anarchy. When you cross the line, your desire to create the anarchy of destruction will become almost all consuming . . . "True gratification comes in the creative and stylish destruction of other's data based inside the VORTEX." For those unfamiliar with the argot of the computer underground, the words of Colostomy Bagboy were enough to set hair ablaze. However, within the underground it fit a mold of standard, if cleverly written, rabble-rousing malevolence exceeding other similar publications only by minor degrees. In other words, it fit the lay of the land. The Fidonet, or Paris's silicon vortex, was ripe for a kind of low-level hacking version of search and destroy. Fidonet is sustained by a diverse collection of hobbyists and computer professionals who spent quite a deal of their spare time building up its electronic mail capabilities which encompassed sending astronomical volumes of database-like messaging from system to system in a mind-numbingly complicated web which stretched around the planet. Because it is cobbled together from countless different and poorly understood, poorly documented, poorly supported software mixtures, it is a security nightmare and riddled with gaping loopholes which can be exploited to sow fear and insane hatred among its managers. While pernicious hacking on the Fidonet may have seemed like a neat trick for Paskell Paris, it was the equivalent of pulling wings off flies. However, this being cyberspace, opinions tended to differ. One of Paris's favorite technopathic stunts was the manipulation and fabrication of mail - the creation of the mail bomb - within the structure of the Fidonet. He would select a well-read electronic message feed and concoct an elaborate series of irritating, tasteless and sophomoric messages packed with puzzling lies, spittle-spraying-from-the-mouth diatribes and sexual language of the vilest sort. In his own words: "Single message bases are called echos, and are organized by a moderator. All posts are expected to deal with the particular subject of the echo. Example: Posts in the abortion echo are expected to concern abortion, posts in the Holy_Bible echo are expected to deal with the Bible. Moderators who do not understand the inherent nature of the VORTEX become quite peeved when one gets off subject. They get all pissed and become unhappy Babylonians." Paris published the BOGUS software in Vortex to automate the production of fabricated mail chains of purely inflammatory quality. He would brag of launching these electronic mail stink bombs into the network from time to time. He also snatched the regular message bases devoted to virus information on the net. This created a continuous war between the moderators of the virus information feeds, who were only interested in pushing various shareware anti-virus software kits, and Paris and assorted like-minded denizens of the Fidonet. One of the moderators of the virus information echos was a European by the name of Edwin Cleton. Cleton was constantly threatening anyone who didn't agree with him with banishment from the Fidonet echo, called Virus, which he controlled. Cleton would, he said, "Hit them with his electronic baseball bat." These were brainless, empty threats in cyberspace but Cleton's pompous and doctrinaire manner made him an immediate lightning rod for retaliation by hackers like Paris. The security of Cleton's Fidonet echo was abominable in America, and Paris, doing what he liked best, subsequently manipulated the mail and staging within the network so that Cleton, through confusion and inattention, was cut off from control of his own turf. Paris had literally hijacked the mail, proclaiming himself the new moderator and Edwin Cleton an unwanted pest. The anarchy so beloved by Colostomy Bagboy reigned. "Edwin is so pissed off he could shit in his own hand," laughed Paris at one point. That was how he talked. Cleton was indeed incensed. He accused Paris of being a child pornographer, a claim that made the mad hacker chuckle. Even Paris's friends were buffaloed. Terminator, an acquaintance from Missouri, who sometimes collaborated with Paris in the fabrication and deployment of mail bombs into the Fidonet Midwest architecture, confessed Colostomy Bagboy was a wild man, prone to crazy fabrications. "You just never know with Geno," he said. "Geno talks and talks and after a while, anything could be true." Then Colostomy Bagboy walked over even his line by, according to Paris, messing with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Crime Information Center computer. Paris claimed to have invaded the NCIC system, a computer network which contains the national criminal activity database used by lawmen across the country. NCIC is raw criminal data which can tell a cop taking a hit-and-run driver in for booking in California whether the suspect is wanted on different charges in other states. The FBI takes NCIC rather seriously and when Colostomy Bagboy attempted to upload one of his software boobytraps into it, a virtual load of pig iron trouble crashed down on him, he said. Minutes after he had connected via modem with NCIC and hung up, someone had called him back and said merely, "Gotcha" over the phone. The FBI scooped him up and handed him over to authorities at the Oklahoma City jail. Back in the real world, it was quite a different story. Paris was indicted by a federal grand jury and jailed in late 1993 on the far more prosaic felony charges of forgery, making false claims, possession of a stolen credit card (later dismissed), possession of photo license of another, and related counts. He pleaded guilty, was convicted and sentenced to serve a twelve-month stint in prison, delivered by the state of Oklahoma and the federal government. Paskell Paris, according to federal indictment CR-93-255R, "falsely represented himself to be [another]" and had engaged in activities aimed at hijacking of that identity. Weirdly, Paskell Paris's friends in cyberspace had no idea what really had happened to him, just that he was in jail. Terminator knew Colostomy Bagboy was up the river for at least a year and that was it. Finally, he received mail from Paris in the Oklahoma City jail which declared, in typical megalomaniacal Bagboy style: "For those that did not know, I am in here suffering and paying penance for your sins. Only through my blood will you be saved. "The United States of America, supposed land of the free imprisons more people than any other nation on the face of the earth. "The 'information highway' is a joke. This was proven when they arrested me for supposed 'hacking' on the NCIC. We have no freedom of expression or speech . . . Rise up, oh sons and daughters, in bloody revolution against the oppressive regime! Like Nelson Mandela before me I will suffer . . . although as long as I have a punk named Mikey in here the suffering ain't that bad." While Paris was far from the information highway's anti-Christ, his Vortex persona had spun a legend that convinced his targets and peers he was one bad dude. The recent spate of mail-bombs eerily echoed Paris, as if the inflammatory hacker was using another of his technopathic tricks to speak from behind the iron curtain of an Oklahoma correctional facility. But no, this time one of the hijackers was the Terminator who had seized control of the special interest group - moderated by Jeff Cook, an American representative of the Dutch Thunderbyte antivirus company. Cook, like Cleton in a different echo in 1993, had become a cyber-whipping boy for similar reasons: childishly authoritarian harassment of those deemed politically incorrect, even if they were little more than trivial nuisances. Kicked into a kind of electronic limbo where he would labor to restore control of the special interest group by cutting electronic mail feeds to those suspected of cooperating with the master of the mail bombs, Cook found that the harder he worked, the more messages like this would be posted into his domain of cyberspace: "Are there any persons out there that get off by watching a woman pee? There is just something about seeing and hearing a woman pee. Not sure if I am into getting peed upon, but I am always open to new adventures." Obviously, not every operator in this particular corner of the Fidonet wished to be part of a chain of electronic messaging which included scat material. Some monitored their systems more closely for obviously fake mail; others hunkered down and attempted to secure their automated mail queues. Still others took the expedient cure: they simply dropped the special interest group. The uproar even involved Planet Connect, a Memphis-based telecommunications company which supplies satellite-transmitted feeds for much of the Fidonet. Planet Connect, in an attempt to staunch the flow of nuisance mail, tried to implement a "dirty word" software filter in September to trap the bogus mail but abandoned the effort when some Fidonet sysops complained of discarded and censored messaging. Ironically, Planet Connect's minor involvement in the mail-bombing war being fought on the Fidonet illustrated how technology, in this case the transfer of Fidonet mail feeds through more centralized satellite telecommunications providers, had contributed to the erosion of special interest group moderators within the network by the de facto elimination of them as the primary links in public mail administration. In effect, such satellite-based providers became positioned to provide the Fidonet's base - which numbers in excess of 8,000 amateur, semi-professional and professional systems - as a neatly packaged entertainment-type on-line service, for a price. In the meantime, the Fidonet's Virus Information special interest group had changed its subject matter once again, from golden showers to transvestism. MR. BADGER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO-GOOD, VERY BAD DAY: THE SUPER-DUPER INFORMATION HIGHWAY IS SCHEDULED FOR CONSTRUCTION AND YOUR HOUSE WILL BE TORN DOWN TOMORROW TO MAKE WAY; FOR THE SURREALISTS: WEISER IS DUMBER! Mr. Badger, still wracked by the psychological pain inflicted by the installation of a Novell network is further aggrieved by the subject of this month's review: a recent Smithsonian magazine hagiography devoted to those wild and crazy techno-fiends from Palo Alto. For those unaware, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is the think tank that claims responsibility for developing the concepts of the personal computer, laser printers, modern chips, icon-based computing and powdered toast. For the truly ignorant, Xerox never did make a dime _using_ those innovations, leading one to reflect on the old adage: "Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. The totally incompetent join think tanks." But Mr. Badger is too alarmed by the current shenanigans at Xerox PARC to sit snickering in the corner any longer. No sir, any man sick of networking will turn absolutely bilious at the thoughts of Mark Weiser, director of PARC's computer science laboratory: " . . . Weiser wants computers to vanish into the woodwork -- literally. He intends to deconstruct the stand-alone computer, shell it like an oyster, and embed its microprocessors in the walls, desks, light sockets, doorknobs and practically every other square foot of your workplace and home. Those chips will communicate with one another and connect via the 'information superhighway.'" PARC envisions a day when "pads" -- small computer-based screens -- will be used much as Post-It notes are now. An office or living room might have dozens. Some will be devoted to "magazines" and be updated automatically. Others will serve as general purpose communication mediums and bulletin boards. In conjunction, users will have small "tabs": devices to tell the "pads" who and where you are, much like present day cellular phones. The presence of the "tab," which will use weak infrared and/or radio signals, will tell the "pads" around you how to act and what data to access. All this will work through the use of "secret numbers," which, with a decentralized system, is supposed to protect privacy. God help us. Can you imagine? Hacking is all to easy (and fun) now. And they're going to broadcast this shit? It's damn near impossible to block out the frequencies generated by ordinary coaxial cable. And they're going to BROADCAST!? All I can say is that scanners are way cool already, but this may be more fun then even Mr. Badger can handle. But let us put aside the prospect of modifying normal scanners, many of which can already interface with computers to keep a running log, and focus on the true nightmare for a minute: The networks of the future! I thought I was sick of Novell, a program that already installs dozens of software drivers that I neither need nor want. But wrestle with the idea of software designed to integrate everything from the dataprocessing in your office to -- and I am not making this up -- the oven in your home. Mind you, there are already corporations making good money just because television and VCR manufacturers can't agree on just how remote controls should work. So, we're going to network everything from my car bumper to -- again, I kid you not -- telephone poles? Yessir. And Mr. Badger has a standing date with Cindy Crawford every Friday night. It is purely the work of Satan that Popular Mechanics has already published an issue devoted to "A Guided Tour of the New Interactive Home: How to Put Your Whole House Online." Bear in mind that PM _could_ have instructed readers how to install and use remote control light switches and sockets. [Something Mr. Badger is doing himself]. But n-o-o-o, current technology just isn't good enough for Popular Mechanics, which is already referring to Home-Based Assistants as "PDA's [personal digital assistants] for the home." Yeah, sure. We all know just how well PDAs are selling, don't we? The internal conflicts in Popular Mechanics boil down to common electronic utopianism, the usual three-pronged swill we're sick to death of: 1) We're going to make everything more complex. 2) People are already too stupid to handle the system. 3) We'll give the people simpler interfaces. Only the sideline sceptics remember that step 3 runs right into step 1. Count on being burdened with even more complex systems. Why? Recall, at one time DOS was a revolution because it made complex programs available to ordinary businesses. But it was "too hard." So we have Windows. Of course, the same people who considered DOS "too hard" are incapable of managing Windows reliably, too. Mr. Badger has already heard complaints that "icons are too hard to understand and remember." Of course they are! That's what happens when you trade phonetic alphabets for hieroglyphics. Bill Gates got only one thing right: There is far more money in conning American techno-cabbage into believing themselves wise than there is in teaching them how to READ. Between Gates and Xerox PARC we will have a future where the literate will be able to drive the masses like unwashed sheep. Sure, an occasional frisky lamb will break free, but the bulk will remain tranquil until the day of slaughter. Even elephants can be trained to believe in the invincibility of a fragile rope tied to one leg. How hard can it be to break sheep? The answer is left as an intellectual exercise for the reader. DISEASE-OF-THE-WEEK JOURNALISM SERVES RICHARD PRESTON WELL IN 'THE HOT ZONE' Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" (Random House) is hyperbolic disease-of-the-week foma guaran-damn-teed to show up as a megamovie sometime in the near future. Despite that and a number of other not-so-obvious cripplers, it's still a pretty interesting book. Preston is telling the story of a dreaded group of rare viral illnesses classified rather dryly in freshman microbiology texts as the African hemorrhagic fevers. Specifically, "The Hot Zone" gives readers a ringside seat to fulminant death by Marburg and Ebola Zaire viruses, microorganisms so lethal they literally blast apart the cells which make up the lining of the circulatory system. With no vaccine and no therapy, those infected with Ebola are usually doomed. For "The Hot Zone," Preston has taken a thesaurus of his own manufacture to the disconnected terminology of pathology journals. For example, orchitis becomes "blown up, semirotten testicles," one of the milder symptoms a number of German survivors of Marburg infection had to deal with in 1967 when the disease first appeared. Massive maculopapullosis in another Marburg victim is "[bleeding] into the space between the skin and the flesh. The skin puffs up and separates from the flesh like a bag." But wait, Ebola Zaire is worse. Before slaying almost everyone it infects, the virus destroys the minds of the unfortunate, leaving them with a mask-like, emotionless stare and driving them into seizures before massive shock occurs and black blood and cellular ooze pours from the gums, the mouth, the eyes, the mammae, the anus, anywhere there is an opening. Quite naturally, the reader is disgusted and horrified. Preston has written "The Hot Zone" like a screenplay for a big budget horror movie and it's a slightly dishonest tactic. He neglects to mention that since the discovery of thread virus disease in 1967 - the family of viruses which include Marburg and Ebola Zaire - only a little over 600 cases have been reported worldwide and of those, the majority occurred in 1976 in two clusters in East Africa. Preston tries to convey the image that these killers are explosively infectious and it was only through some serendipitous miracle that the human race wasn't destroyed during those outbreaks. Although a great hook, it's not really true. Infectious diseases expert C. J. Peters, one of the stars of Preston's book writes in one of his own papers in 1993, one which the author presumably read, ". . . transmission of [Ebola] died out concomitantly with institution of modest efforts at containment such as the use of gowns and gloves." Ebola Zaire spread in East Africa in 1976 primarily because of the reuse of surgical tools and syringes in a hospital where frank cases of the disease had arrived. Since the virus is most certainly bloodborn, catastrophe resulted. Preston chunders on though, using the military lingo bandied about by technicians at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases to heighten the terror of Ebola. People become walking virus bombs: they "go down," "crash" and "bleed out." Not surprisingly, I couldn't find any such crap in the recent scientific literature on the thread viruses. The linchpin in "The Hot Zone" is something of a come-on. In 1989 an American firm imported a batch of virus-contaminated monkeys, one of the animals besides man lethally sickened by thread viruses, to its warehouse in Reston, Virginia. The veterinarian in charge, frustrated by his dying stock, sent a sample of monkey serum to USAMRID for assay. Army scientists saw thread viruses and became fearful Ebola Zaire was present in a suburb of Washington; they moved to seal the facility and destroy the animals. Unfortunately for any director who wants to make a movie out of "The Hot Zone," God had planted a whoopie cushion in Reston. The monkeys were infected with a new virus, subsequently named Ebola Reston, which was morphologically similar to Marburg and Ebola Zaire but sufficiently distinct from the others at the level of the molecular units which make up the viruses proper so that it didn't produce disease in man. Three years later Ebola Reston cropped up in Italy under similar circumstances. Again, no one became sick. So, no matter how Preston rolls the dice, by the midwater mark of "The Hot Zone" you know the end of the story. One can see Ridley Scott whining now: "C'mon, can't we at least have a few Americans die, too?!? Can we?" Still, "The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story" lives up to its title: a fast, extremely scarey read. And with all the starfucker-type entertainment biz blurbs on the dustcover - noted scientists Stephen King and Robert Redford (who had been lined up for the movie version but has since bailed) weigh in with kudos - it's fair to expect "The Hot Zone" was always destined to be written with the nod to sizzle over substance whenever the two intersect. Go for it. Disregard the philosophical pandering at the end when Preston tries to shovel in some rationalization that AIDS and thread viruses are the expected revenge of a planet parasitized by too many desecrating humans destroying the rain forests and pray he never gets hold of a book on parasitology. FLOYD KEMSKE SUBJECTS HIMSELF TO VIRTUAL EDITING, COMMITS SUICIDE ONE MONTH LATER (JUST JOKING) Floyd Kemske's third novel, tentatively entitled "Vampire Management" is being edited on-line through the joys of the current techno-geegaw of the Internet, the Mosaic graphical software interface. To access the early drafts of "Vampire Management," according to Kemske's publisher, Catbird Press, "point to E = mc" - uh, no, sorry, heh-heh, just another arrant Crypt Newsletter joke . . . what we REALLY meant to say - honest - was: "point to http://marketplace.com/0/obs/obshome.html." In any case, you can bug Floyd at floyd@editorial.com and it's worth it to be tipped to the author's "The Virtual Boss" which - the Crypt Newsletter maintains - was THE fiction book to read on computers in corporate culture in 1994. In a recent interview, Floyd cringed at the idea that, perhaps, Internet denizens of the Usenet newsgroup alt.vampyres would stop by the site. Kemske also rashly admitted to Crypt Newsletter staffers that although he had tried to access the project through America OnLine, the software links had defied him. (Oop, perhaps we shouldn't have leaked that; just one more bag of virtual roofing tacks carelessly spilled onto the information highway.) Anyway, you might be able to cajole Floyd or his editor into giving you a glimpse of "Vampire Management." If unsuccessful at reaching the Catbird virtual editing project, at the very least you must familiarize yourself with "The Virtual Boss," a "pearl of great price" packed with satire and wit as black as sac cloth. Contacts: fkemske@cerfnet.com Online bookstore: obs@marketplace.com Catbird Press: 203-230-2391; fax: 230-8029 catbird@editorial.com GET YOUR ORDERS FOR OFFICIAL URNST KOUCH MERCHANDISE IN NOW, JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON: 'THE VIRUS CREATION LABS: A JOURNEY INTO THE UNDERGROUND' ARRIVES An excerpt from the book, "The Virus Creation Labs": "The current United States can be defined as an immense accumulation of not terribly acute or attentive people obliged to operate a uniquely complex technology, which, all other things being equal, always wins. No wonder error and embarrassment lurk everywhere, and no wonder cover-up and bragging have become the favored national style." --Paul Fussell in "BAD," 1991 "The Virus Creation Labs" probably wouldn't exist without the great techno-white elephant of 1991-92, the Michelangelo computer virus. As I'll get into, the Michelangelo affair was the apotheosis of Paul Fussell's America: an immense accumulation of not terribly acute or attentive people were beaten repeatedly over the head by the cudgel of poorly understood computer technology. Although the Michelangelo virus was real, the nation's PCs were not about to lose their datastores to it during the months leading up to March 6, 1992, at least not in any noticeable way. Most Americans seemed to figure this out instinctively - after the fact. Skeptics and some computer industry insiders certainly knew in February the virus would be a bust. But you never would have suspected as much from the panicked cries of software vendors and assorted experts in the computer press and mass media who predicted significant computer calamity on March 6. Predictably, error and embarrassment there were aplenty after the sixth when less successful vendors than John McAfee turned on the anti-virus software developer and blamed him for manufacturing the crisis. Bragging was in no short supply, either. USA Today's technology writer, John Schneidawind, insisted during an interview that "Everyone's PCs would have crashed" if the press hadn't sounded the alarm in a timely manner. Schneidawind attempted to cover himself in glory by comparing the Michelangelo virus threat to the menace of the BCCI bank scandal. He weirdly maintained that since the press took a hit for being asleep at the wheel on BCCI, it wasn't going to happen again with the Michelangelo computer virus. All the foolishness was summed up by Carl Jensen, a journalism professor and media critic at Sonoma State in California, who dubbed Michelangelo one of the "junk food news stories" of 1992 in the annual Project Censored report, "The News That Didn't Make The News - And Why." The Michelangelo debacle ignited a keen interest in me to find out what, precisely, computer viruses were, how they worked, and better yet, who was writing them. It sent me down the trail to the rim of cyberspace in search of people who, perhaps not surprisingly, turned out to be pretty much like most Americans, except with an order of magnitude greater interest in the inner workings of the desktop personal computer. Like most of us, there wasn't a nobleman in the lot -- and there were none among the ranks of the anti-virus software developers and security consultants who consider themselves the gatekeepers at a fantasy wall of their own construction erected between the Wild West of cyberspace and the mannered, sterile environment of safe home and business computing. The story of computer viruses is also a story at the apex of the vaunted age of information, its denizens mythical outriders in the new land of Nod - Information Superhighway, that country named by Vice President Albert Gore and too many futurologists to mention. However, this country isn't much like the pretty pictures painted in the mainstream media, where ill-defined riches and information screaming for freedom reward the quick, the clever or the unorthodox mind armed merely with a telephone line and a computer. It is, instead, a country that defines the meaning of information glut - data, data everywhere but not a thought to think. It is a world where it's clear that pushing packets of information from point A to point Z in stupefying quantity is of little benefit to anyone except those in position to place press releases as media stories-of-the-day. Those who think the United States is on the verge of creating a new utopia where the national product, currency and sole means of reward is data would do well to pay attention. The virus programmers, the security consultants, and the anti-virus software entrepreneurs in "The Virus Creation Labs" all exist side-by-side in this new land of Nod. They're on and within the Internet, on your neighborhood bulletin board system, and chatting with anyone who will listen on commercial ventures like Prodigy. Consider Little Loc, a San Diego teen and programmer savant of Satan Bug, declaiming on Prodigy to a bemused, uncomprehending audience about the undetectability of his virus which would eventually take down Secret Service computers. This world has Fagins, too. You'll read of John Buchanan, who walked both sides of the line, sharing counsel with anti-virus software developers, security consultants and virus programmers alike while mass-producing viruses with hacker software toolkits and selling a huge library of them to anyone with the right cash. You'll meet the big egos, too, like strange Dr. Alan Solomon, an English programmer who compared himself to Winston Churchill while collecting intelligence on hackers and passing it on to New Scotland Yard in hopes of having them arrested. You'll meet Nowhere Man, the author of the original Virus Creation Laboratory, and read of the elusive members of phalcon/SKISM, a hacking group which perfected the "art" of object-oriented virus programming while pumping out the electronic magazine known as 40Hex. You'll read of petty crooks and bands of computer hobbyists who took seriously the idea of creating the equivalent of the world's largest electronic monuments to digital nothing, the virus exchange bulletin board system. Like the on-line community today, the characters in "The Virus Creation Labs" have little real interest in the revitalization of democracy or any other high-minded ideals frequently cited as benefits of electronic interconnectivity, unless you consider the mindless accumulation of binary data a socially invigorating development. More often you'll find relentless hucksterism, witless gossip masquerading as reason, corrosive vulgarity, petty vendettas, dirty tricks and routine invasions of personal privacy. If "The Virus Creations Labs" is a look at a new world, you'll find it bears close resemblance to the old one, only events zip by faster and with more unpredictable ferocity. In it, you'll read of: >How to manufacture a computer crisis: Michelangelo, McAfee, the media and the pungent odor of mendacity. >The creeping evil of people with funny names. Come face to face with some personalities from the computer underground - virus writers - without computer industry mouthpieces delivering the skinny second-hand or selectively edited for political correctness. Why, some of them aren't moral degenerates! Surprise, surprise. >He conquered the world! Well, just the US Secret Service. Meet Little Loc aka Priest aka Hacker4Life, a San Diego teen who wanted to be the most dangerous virus writer in America. They laughed, oh yes, they laughed at him on the Prodigy on-line service! But they stopped laughing when his Satan Bug virus struck down the Secret Service's PC network; then his Natas virus - that's SATAN spelled backwards - started a minor calamity in Mexico City. So, who's laughing now? "The Virus Creation Labs" knows. >Viruses: Who makes them, who sells them, who buys them and what happens to them after they've gone around the world a few times in cyberspace. >The Feds who set up a virus exchange and hacker tool bulletin board system for the Department of the Treasury. Guess what happened. Yes, that's right, the Washington Post found out about it. Can you spell "Public relations nightmare?" These are only a few of the spell-binding true stories of intrigue and technology gone haywire in "The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey Into the Underground". Review copies, information, gossip, scintillating conversation: Contact: George Smith e-mail: 70743.1711@compuserve.com ph: 818-568-1748 ********ORDERING INFORMATION*********** Or review copies, information, gossip, scintillating conversation, fax tones, etc.: --->Place your orders now for "The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey Into the Underground" by George Smith. (American Eagle). 180 pp., $12.95. Cash, check, m.o., your favorite plastic or queries to: American Eagle, POB 41401, Tucson, AZ 85717. Phone ordering: voice or fax: 1-602-888-4957.<------- toll free: 1-800-719-4957 In Europe, Addison-Wesley. Release date not set. FINDING/OBTAINING/READING THE CRYPT NEWSLETTER: --A complete set of 28 back issues of The Crypt Newsletter along with special editor's notes can be obtained on diskette by sending $45 cash, check or m.o. to: George Smith 1635 Wagner Street Pasadena, CA 91106 Remember to include a good mailing address with any correspondence. ----Want to ensure the Crypt Newsletter remains a good read? SHOW YOUR SUPPORT. The Crypt Newsletter expects you to subscribe if you read it regularly. Send $30 for twelve issues to the address above. On COMPUSERVE, straight text editions of the newsletter can be retrieved from: The "CyberLit" library in CYBERFORUM (GO CYBERFORUM). The "Papers/Magazines" and "Future Media" libraries in the Journalism Forum (GO JFORUM). On DELPHI, these versions are warehoused in The Writers Group, General Info database and the Internet Services Special Interest Group in the General Discussion database. On GENIE, the Crypt Newsletter can be found in the DigiPub RT special interest group. -------------------------------------------------------------- Editor George Smith edits The Crypt Newsletter from Pasadena, CA. Andy Lopez lives in Columbia, SC. copyright 1994 Crypt Newsletter. All rights reserved.