THE SERBIAN ELECTRONIC BOGEYMAN





ELECTRONIC BOGEYMAN: an alleged criminal hacker, instrument of 

one or an anonymous source portrayed in the mainstream media as a 

menace to society. The electronic bogeyman must always be quoted 

making grandiose, unverifiable, or nutty claims (e.g., opening all 

the automatic garage doors in Anaheim, California at precisely 2:00 pm) 

about feats, usually malicious, that can be performed with a 

computer.



Usage:  The New York Times interviewed an _electronic bogeyman_ 

from Serbia who claimed his computer virus would corrupt data 

on the Internet in order to save mankind from itself.



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The Dec. 8 issue of the New York Times included a short bit of news

on Serbian virus-writers yearning to destroy the Internet.



In de facto electronic bogeyman style <tm>, the Times printed 

18-year old Belgrade University physics student Rasa Karapandea 

declaring he and a group of peers were bending their life to the 

destruction of the Internet.



How was this to be accomplished?  By the writing of computer viruses

for the Unix operating system, said Karapandea.



"We are working on making viruses for Unix, the system the Internet 

uses, but it is well protected.  We know how to destroy the DOS system, 

that is easy," Karapandea conspiratorially confided to the Times.



Like all good electronic bogeymen, Karapandea and his team of 

virus-writers have a back-up plan should their grasp of the technology

of Unix viruses fall short. It's "Dig we must!"



"If we can't make a virus fox Unix we can always cut the optical cable

. . . This is my mission in life to save the world from the 

Internet."



It is only the pure milk of human kindness, apparently, that motivates

Kaparandea in this superhuman task. "The Internet is a dehumanizing 

[addiction] and the greatest single threat to human civilization,"

he said.



It's worth mentioning that a few Crypt News readers felt the 

electronic bogeyman <tm> quotient for this story so high that it 

seemed likely there was a 50-50 chance the N. Y. Times reporter had 

embellished a substantial portion of his dispatch purely for effect.