Børsen (Danish Business Daily) Thursday 13th October 1992 Technology Page THE VIRUS KILLERS FROM PRAESTOE by John Ekelund A group of happy "amateurs" with its headquarters in Praestoe, Southern Jutland, Denmark, soon to be world-wide, has joined battle both against EDP virus gangsters all over the world, and against the section of the computer business which lives rather too cleverly and too well from selling computer security. The organisation, or association rather, Safe Hex International, (SHI) collects information from the whole world about both old and new computer viruses and, for 30 Danish kroner ($ 6), supplies a disk knowing more than 1400 viruses to date. It is a large task to take care of, on a world-wide basis, all the viruses which are, to a greater or lesser extent, dangerous to Amiga's and PC's. SHI has also, in Denmark, Sweden and Norway begun to infiltrate, through the telephone network, the databases or bulletin boards which the young hackers or freaks program with viruses. The SHI people try to pass them- selves off as young hackers and programmers. "We are far ahead enough to see that some of the virus people work together just like a drug network. Some of the worst viruses maybe could not be stopped if they got out," says Erik Loevendahl Soerensen, founder of Safe Hex International. The anti virus efforts continue to be managed on an amateur basis from Erik Loevendahl's living room in his small detached house in Praestoe, Denmark. He describes SHI and its efforts to date,through 26 international virus killer centres, as a Green Peace type of organisation which, amongst other things, aims to supplyvirus killers at a price ordinary people can afford. We charge 30 Danish kroner for a virus killer disk, whether it is a private person or a business. We want to be an alternative to the established dealer system and we make easily understandable instructions, which even children 8 years and over can understand. The basic idea is that it shouldn't cost a lot of money to get a virus killer, says Erik Loevendahl Soerensen. Erik Loevendahl Soerensen got the idea for Safe Hex International five years ago when, three weeks after he obtained it, his computer screen informed him that his system had been infiltratedby an SCA virus. A few weeks later it was again hit by a virus.This led to contact with a program- mer and today SHI is in contact with 250 amateurs (of which 20-25 are amateur programmers) all over the world, who are all involved in the virus battle as idealists. "We have now stopped working together with all professional programmers, almost down to the last single one. They were simply more interested in money than in quality. It is no good charging Mercedes prices for a Trabant. We have also out-competed several commercial suppliers of virus killers because there were so many bad products," says Erik Loevendahl Soerensen. Safe Hex International's work has won so much international recognition that Erik Loevendahl Soerensen has recently been honoured with the Danish Security Award. Besides its work withvirus killers, Safe Hex International is also working on standardising the legal foundation in Europe now against data criminality. EEC HARMONISATION Legislation in many countries does not take into account at all the new form of computer crime or "hobby" which, not least, the enthusiastic young get started in. SHI has recently had contact with the EEC, and Erik Loevendahl Soerensen expects, that SHI will have a say in the up-coming EEC harmonisation of legislation in the area. Erik Loevendahl Soerensen has no professional past as computerprogrammer or the like but, on the contrary, as boilerman and janitor. His work with anti-virus started as a hobby and diversion from unemployment. The amateur ideal which is the idealistic background for SHI mustbe pre- served. But it could well become more difficult to keep to the straight and narrow. Some weeks ago SHI was asked to make virus killers for some large public Danish institutions - and there you charge more than 30 Danish kr, concedes the father of SHI's openly.