<-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> <-> Death By Electronics <-> <-> Volume 1, Issue 2 <-> <-> Released on <-> <-> 11/1/94 <-> <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> +----------+ |Disclaimer| : We, at DBE, take no responsability for your actions +----------+ due to this magazine. We are simply using the freedom of speech, and the freedom of the press. We do not encourage you to do anything that we demonstrate in this magazine. +------------------+ |Quick Introduction| : Well, this is our second issue. At first, DBE was a +------------------+ general group that did anything. We are now becoming more and more "concentrated" as time goes on. What I mean by this is that instead of trying to do everything, we are becoming specialist's in one domain. This will most likely be programming. But, the programming chapter is very vast. So, we could end up doing anything from Loaders to Games to Wardialers. We will just have to wait and see... <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> <-> Table Of Contents <-> <-> <-> <-> 1. What You Should Know About Viruses <-> <-> 2. The Conscience of a Hacker <-> <-> 3. DBE Releases and Projects <-> <-> 4. Future Crew Info <-> <-> 5. All You Wanted to Know About Demos <-> <-> 6. Montreal Freenet <-> <-> <-> <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> (1). What You Should Know About Viruses by Source Unknown I will first explain to you very simply the life cycle of the average virus. 1. A virus is created by some unknown person. This person is usually a university student or a famous virus programmer. 2. The virus is released into CyberSpace. The virus will either be in a archive telling people that its a virus. Or it will hidden within a actual program. 3. People download the program, virus scan it, find nothing unusual and run it. Its only a matter of time now before they realise that they got infected by a virus. 4. Once somebody realises that he's been infected by a unscanable virus, he will most likely ask his friend to give him the most recent virus scanner. If he still can't scan it. He might call McAfee BBS to send them the virus, and wait for them to create a scanner able to find it. Ok. What this means to you, is that the average virus that is released, becomes scanable about one month after release. There are aproximately 40 new unscanable viruses and strains introduced to the world every month. This number also keeps on growing. That means, that in 3 months, your scanner can't find ñ120 viruses. After a year, it can't find ñ480 viruses. People who try to virus others aren't stupid. They will most likely use the most recent and destructive virus that they can find so that others can't scan it unless they keep up to date with virus scanners. So, what does that all mean to you? It means that you should update your virus scanners whenever possible. I personally prefer McAfee to the rest. McAfee comes out with a new scanner every month. BUT, there are many ways to find unscanable viruses on your HD. Some viruses make hidden .COM versions of every .EXE file that they infect. This is true with the 250 Rauser and Aids II virus. I, for one, got infected by the 250 virus. It was in a file called RAUSER.ZIP It was supposed to allow you to hack Remote-Access BBS's. To find these viruses, all you have to do is write ATTRIB /S *.COM at the DOS prompt. If you see a H in the attribute column next to a COM file that you didn't put there, it MIGHT of been created by a virus. How do these viruses work? Well, lets say that I run a file called TELIX.EXE Once I run that file, the virus will make itself a version called TELIX.COM which will be hidden with attrib commands so that when I type TELIX, it runs TELIX.COM (which will end up doing damage, then run TELIX.EXE) instead of TELIX.EXE! The CHKLIST.MS are helpful for finding unscanable viruses also. What a CHKLIST.MS does, is that it keeps track of the size, date, attribute etc of important files in its directory. When you run MSAV or MWAV, it will tell you whenever the information in CHKLIST.MS is different to the information of your .EXE and .COM files. If you scan your HD, and find that there are alot of EXE and COM files that have all increased in size by the same ammount, this is most likely a virus. Most of the time, if you execute a virus (by itself) all that you will see is your computer pause, then come back to normal without a message or anything being displayed. That is because the virus is most likely installing itself into memory. Thats one way of finding out that you ran a virus. So if you execute a suspecious file, and all it does is pause for a few seconds, then it MIGHT be a virus. If your computer reboots, this also might be a virus. Most viruses that write a copy of themselves to the boot sector reboot after doing so, so that they can go into memory. Still another way of finding a virus is viewing whats inside the actual file. SOME viruses and trojans have text strings that are visible in the EXE or COM saying stuff like "I hope you backed up your HD!" or "Don't FUCK with me!". Stuff like that makes it pretty obvious that its a virus (It could be something else like a vulgar game or something, but then again, it could be a virus). I use Norton Commander to view this, but you can also use QDOS or Norton Utilities. Even though viruses are generaly small (most being around 1000 bytes) its VERY easy to make them bigger by doing this: COPY /B VIRUS.EXE + SHITFILE.DAT VIRUS.EXE (VIRUS.EXE = Virus, SHITFILE.DAT = Any file used to make VIRUS.EXE bigger.) The virus will now be its size + the second file big, and this does NOT affect the viruses performance (I know that this is true for Trojans, but viruses may behave differently since they "reproduce" themselves. When I say virus, it could be a virus, trojan or worm. Use your common sense to find out which type im talking about.) One last way of knowing if you are infected by a virus is to run a executable file that you havent ran in a long time. Look at your free disk space before and after you run it. If after you run it, you have less free disk space, then you are in trouble! The best way to understand viruses is to create one. The 2nd best way is to try one, and the 3rd best way is to read about it. Search for a product called VSUM (Virus Summanry) If you call the McAfee BBS, you can find it. Or just FTP to 192.187.128.1 and go in PUB/VSUM (I think thats it) It is a excellent program. I used to use it whenever I planned a "virus attack". You can learn everything about viruses with this product. Here is what happened when I got infected by the 250 virus. 1. Downloaded RAUSER.ZIP 2. Executed RAUSER.EXE, tried it. Found out it didn't work. Deleted it 3. During 3 days, I notice that my computer was acting strange. It would sometimes reboot by itself, and I could not remove directories since it would tell me that it wasen't empty (Hidden .COM files) 4. On the 3rd day, I was suspecting that I had a virus. This became true when I saw a message saying "I LOVE MAAIKE" cover my screen in flashing Green. 5. I put in a diskette to scan my computer. It found nothing. But when the program stopped, it said "Write Protect. Can't create SCAN.COM" that's when I realised that it was making hidden .COM files for every .EXE file that I ran. 6. After 1:30 hours, I managed to manualy rid my system of this nasty virus. What did I lose? Norton Utilities 7.0, and some files in DOS. 7. I called McAfee BBS, U/L the virus, and to my suprise, I saw that in their new Uploads, about 7 other people from Canada and the US had already uploaded it. 8. 2 weeks after this, Scan 116 which was able to scan it came out. I scanned my computer, and to my releif, the virus was totaly gone. Well, I hope that you guys can learn from my experience. If you get infected by a unscanable virus, you should be able to scan it anytime from 1 day to 1 month. If you have important files on your HD, don't use your computer during this time as the virus MIGHT destroy your files. Remember, not all viruses destroy and damage files, but alot of them do. (2). The Conscience of a Hacker by HellúSpawn This is an exerpt from "The Conscience of a Hacker" by The Mentor from Phrack volume one, issue 7, phile 3. (The Hacker Crackdown) This version is different then the one in Phrack Mag. I made a discovery today, I found a computer, Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to, if it makes a mistake, it's bacause I screwed up, not because it doesn't like me... And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us and try to make us beleive that it's for our own good, yet were the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal, my crime is that of curiousity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. (3). DBE Releases and Projects by Source Unknown [RELEASED]: DBE_MAG1: DBE Magazine #1 is about 22,000 bytes with 7 articles from 2 different editors, No Fear and Source Unknown. No Fear lives in Montreal, and Source Unknown lives in Ottawa. CODER ver 0.01: Coder is a random password generator. All it does is create, print and save passwords. It was created due to the lack of such programs. It is 9,712 bytes big. The source code is about 300 lines in Turbo Pascal 7.0 Created by Source Unknown. CODER ver 0.02: This is the 2nd upgrade of Coder. It features 7 "fixes" and "updates". It is 12,640 bytes big. The source code is about 430 lines in Turbo Pascal 7.0 and ASM. Created by Source Unknown. [PROJECTS]: DBE_MAG3.TXT: 3rd magazine of DBE. Edited by at least 3 different editors. CODER ver 0.03: 3rd upgrade of Coder. Created by Source Unknown. DBE_LOAD.EXE: We are working on creating a small 30 second loader of DBE. Source Unknown and No Fear are working on it. A WAR DIALER: We are THINKING on creating a usefull wardialer. This would be done using Turbo Pascal and Assembly or C++. Source Unknown, HellùSpawn and No Fear would be the creators of it (for now). We would HOPE to have it completed around January. We haven't thought up of a name yet, but any suggestions would be appreciated. (No, we won't name it after you, and names such as TAUNELOC would not be accepted either!) WARZONE.EXE: I am working on creating a game that ressembles Scorched Earth. Since I always loved that game, and it appears that no new versions of it are comming out, I decided to make my own version of it. This version would we called "Turbo Warzone" and it would be in 256 Color MCGA. Sound Support would be added on later if future versions are created. I hope to have it completed by X-Mas. (4). Future Crew Info by No Fear For those of you who are big fans of demos, I have compiled this information about the group Future Crew. Alias: Real name: Born: Main responsibility: -------------------------------------------------------------- GORE Samuli Syvahuoko 1973 Organizer/PR/E-mail Psi Sami Tammilehto 1973 Coder Trug Mika Tuomi 1972 Coder Wildfire Arto Vuori 1975 Coder Purple Motion Jonne Valtonen 1976 Musician Skaven Peter Hajba 1975 Musician Marvel Aki Maatta 1975 Graphics Artist Pixel Mikko Iho 1975 Graphics Artist Abyss Jussi Laakkonen 1975 BBS Coordinator FC Internet Division: Henchman Markus Maki 1974 E-mail/PR/betatesting Jake Jarkko Heinonen 1973 E-mail/PR/betatesting LIST OF ALL FUTURE CREW RELEASES Filename Size Released A Short Description -------------------------------------------------------------------- GR8.ZIP 31 kb 7-12-89 GR8 intro, EGA/No sound YO!.ZIP 32 kb 2-24-89 YO! intro, VGA textmode/PC-speaker FC-SLIDE.ZIP 350 kb 7-23-90 Slideshow I, a graphics collection, SB ST224.ZIP 130 kb 2-22-91 Scream Tracker 2.24 shareware, SB MENTAL.ZIP 90 kb 7-02-91 Mental Surgery demo, SB/Covox/PC-speaker STMIK020.ZIP 170 kb 8-10-91 Scream Tracker Music Interface Kit 0.20 FISHTRO.ZIP 230 kb 4-08-92 Assembly'92 invitation intro, SB STMIKFIX.ZIP 10 kb 7-14-92 A Bugfix to STMIK UNREAL.ZIP 1350 kb 8-06-92 Unreal megademo, SB/SBp STARPRT2.EXE 6 kb 9-13-92 StarPort BBS intro, VGA/AdLib THEPARTY.ZIP 165 kb 10-02-92 The Party II invitation intro, SB/SBp PANIC.ZIP 950 kb 2-04-93 Panic trackdemo, SB/SBp ASM-93.ZIP 400 kb 6-15-93 Assembly'93 invitation intro, SBp/GUS WCHARTS.ZIP 680 kb 6-26-93 Worldcharts magazine issue #1, SBp/GUS SOULOMAT.ZIP 100 kb 7-10-93 A song by Purple Motion (.MOD) ICEKNGDM.LBM 65 kb 8-01-93 Winner of PC graphics compo at Asm'93 ICEFRONT.ZIP 180 kb 8-01-93 The winner of PC multichnl compo Asm'93 CAN'T.ZIP 125 kb 8-01-93 The second in PC multichnl compo Asm'93 STRSHINE.ZIP 225 kb 8-01-93 The third in PC multichnl compo Asm'93 TROLL.LBM 85 kb 8-01-93 The fourth in PC graphics compo Asm'93 SUNDANCE.ZIP 235 kb 8-10-93 The winner of PC 4chnl compo at Asm'93 2NDREAL1.ZIP 1250 kb 10-07-93 Second Reality, Asm'93 winner, SBp/GUS 2NDREAL2.ZIP 790 kb 10-07-93 Second part of the Second Reality demo 2NDR_MS.ZIP 280 kb 11-01-93 Skaven's songs from Second Reality SYMPHONY.ZIP 260 kb 11-01-93 Symphony by Skaven (.S3M file) PMFRACT.ZIP 210 kb 11-05-93 The winner of Megaleif ST/PC music compo BUSMATKA.ZIP 75 kb 11-09-93 Finnish invitation to Party3 bussymatka STARPORT.ZIP 5 kb 11-21-93 StarPort BBS intro II, VGA/Adlib SP2SRC.ZIP 30 kb 12-02-93 StarPort BBS intro II sources UNREAL11.ZIP 1335 kb 12-28-93 Unreal version 1.1 for GUS JOURNEY1.ZIP 867 kb 12-28-93 First Musicdisk by Purple Motion JOURNEY2.ZIP 1015 kb 12-28-93 Second Musicdisk by Purple Motion CHMIND.ZIP 1420 kb 02-20-94 Chaotic Mind - Music collection by Skaven 2NDPATCH.ZIP 36 kb 02-20-94 Slowdown bugfix patch for 2nd Reality ASM-94.ZIP 221 kb 04-08-94 Assembly'94 Pre-Invitation Intro SCRMT301.ZIP 291 kb 04-18-94 Scream Tracker 3.01 BETA ASM-94_2.ZIP 567 kb 07-03-94 The Assembly '94 Invitation Dentro HOW TO CONTACT THE FUTURE CREW Mail address is: Home BBS is: Abyss / Future Crew StarPort - FC WHQ BBS c/o Jussi Laakkonen +358-0-455 4801 Sepetlahdentie 2 E 36 455 4805 02230 Espoo 455 4807 FINLAND 455 4810 455 4812 GORE's cellular phone (GSM): 455 4827 +358-40-502 3025 455 4829 StarPort is also available thru telnet/rlogin. Telnet MPOLI.FI user-id: PCBOARD. There is also an anonymous FTP-service, MPOLI.FI. These services are accessible only within Finland. Future Crew is currently working on international access. You can also e-mail them or send a fax: Future Crew asks that for all questions, information, etc ... send e-mail to FC@MPOLI.FI. And please don't annoy them with stupid questions where you could find the answer elsewhere. Other addresses are only for contacting purposes ONLY. Alias Address ----- ------- Abyss abyss@mpoli.fi GORE gore@mpoli.fi or jtheinon@cc.helsinki.fi Marvel marvel@mpoli.fi Pixel pixel@mpoli.fi Purple Motion purple.motion@mpoli.fi Skaven skaven@mkoski.otol.fi skaven@mpoli.fi Wildfire wildfire@mpoli.fi Jake jtheinon@cc.helsinki.fi Henchman mmaki@cc.helsinki.fi If you have access to a UNIX prompt, use finger to get the latest news about Future Crew "Finger" jtheinon@cc.helsinki.fi Fax: +358-0-420 8620 (GORE's place) WHAT THOSE GUYS DO Psi - Turku university, major informatics Trug - finished his studies Wildfire - finished high school, starting at an institute Purple Motion - second year in high school Skaven - not studying at the moment Pixel - not studying at the moment Marvel - finished high school Abyss - finished high school, starting at a university GORE - studying in a business school/commercial college Henchman - Institute of Technology, studying computer eng. Jake - Helsinki university, computer science Well that is all the information that I have on them so far. I will be writting about other groups, so that you can be in contact with them. (5). All You Wanted to Know About Demos by No Fear Demos are real cool and they are all over the PC world. But what are demos exactly and how can I go about making one? First, in order for you to make a demo, you must have a general understanding of what it is. You must understand that demos are not animations, like on TV. Nearly everything you see on the screen is being calculated in real-time. What that means is that, a faster CPU will be able to have smoother FXs and both audio and video. The speed of the movement is usually dependant to the speed of the CPU, but the VGA card and sound card also plays a big role. Since demos are mostly nothing more than mathematical calculations, a math coprocessor will greatly increase the speed and flow; a 486/33 with a math coprocessor will run demos faster than a 486/50 without. Most of the time, the competition is the time when the demos are released, but sometimes there are not. The reason for this is that most demos haven't been beta-tested well enough before the and might not work on all machines. There has to be different test for the sound card, video card and so on. So, the groups often will finish their demos after the competition and then release them when they believe that there done. But if the group does not release their demos after a certain period of time (like 1-2 months), the organizers of the competition will release the version which was presented at the competition. There are a few big demo parties being held annually in Europe. These include the following: The Party in Denmark at Christmas-time, The Gathering in Norway around Easter, The Computer Crossroad in Sweden before the summer and Assembly in Finland in the end of Summer. The Computer Crossroads'94, though, has been cancelled. At Assembly'93 which was help in Finland, there were a total of 1500 attenders from which 550 were programmers. About half of them had come from outside Finland Good Internet Demo Sites: A few very good anonymous ftp sites where you can find lots of demos are ftp.uwp.edu, ftp.eng.ufl.edu and wasp.eng.ufl.edu. There are also mirrors for these sites in Europe, for example ftp.luth.se. And since many people don't know how to login to an anonymous ftp site, here's some info: as the login name put "anonymous" and as the password, put your own internet e-mail address. Here are some books that could come very handy as you explore the world of demos (there are undoubtably newer prints, so check them out): Mastering Turbo Assembler, Tom Swan Hayden Books 1989, ISBN 0-672-48435-8 PC System Programming, Michael Tischer Abacus 1990, ISBN 1-55755-036-0 The Programmers PC Sourcebook, Thom Hogan Microsoft Press 1988, ISBN 1-55615-118-7 Programming the 80386, John H. Crawford and Patrick P. Gelsinger Sybex 1987, ISBN 0-89588-381-3 Programmers guide to EGA and VGA cards, Richard F. Ferraro Addison Wesley 1989, ISBN 0-201-12692-3 You'll find that most up to date information are software 'books', or files which you can get from bbs'es and such. News groups are a very good source of information, and it's the proper place to ask questions. In short, there is no magic way of learning to code, it really does take hard work. Learning to code demos is a long and very very difficult process. It takes years to learn to code demos very well. A good way to start is some high level language like Pascal or C and then start to experiment with assembler to increase its performance. It takes a lot of time and experimenting to get better, and there are no shortcuts. The main thing is try to understand what you do, then try to change the program to see what you get, and gain wisdom in what's the best way of doing things. Learning to code well requires a lot of patience, a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of time. It is not easy. The most common programming languages for code is Borland C++, Microsoft C, Borland Turbo Pascal and of course TASM (Turbo Assembler). For graphics, Deluxe Paint 2 Enhanced (and 3D Studio 3.0) seems a good choice. For making the music Scream Tracker 3.0 and for digitizing the samples for songs the Advanced DigiPlayer 3.5 should do the trick. When making a demo you must keep in mind certain things, like which sound card is the standard, most popular, available for testing, etc. Gravis UltraSound - programming advantages the new standard Sound Blaster Pro - the old standard on the demo scene Sound Blaster - the basic sound card Writting demos is very exciting but is does take some time before anyone can reach the status of groups like Future Crew, Triton, etc... but it is not impossible. It all depends on the amount of time that you have to learn the ins and outs of demo making. (6). Montreal Freenet by No Fear Many of the major cities already have freenets at the disposal ofthe public. Soon, there will be a freenet springing up in Montreal. The scheduled launch date is early February, but do to lack of funds, this date will most likely be postponed until mid spring. The Montreal freenet will be setup different than other freenets. Most freenets use gopher as the foundation, but the Montreal freenet will be using LYNX. LYNX is a hypertext software that lets you use Wide World Web sites, as well as GOPHER and FTP. The disadvantage is that the user will not be able to specify which URL he wishes to connect to. So a lot of surfing must be done to get to the desired site. The Montreal Freenet will include the standard features of e-mail, news groups, gopher and WWW. But no telneting out will be allowed, telneting in is O.K., they even try to push this since it frees-up the modems. The menu system will be the standard interactive menu running on UNIX, and will be available both in French and English. There will be no rlogin or ntalk during the first year, but it might be implemented later on. The e-mailing system will support the French character set, but in order not to crash older systems, MIME will be used. MIME is the standard used to convert 8 bit characters to 7 bit, and can be found on PINE or UUENCODE. In the first year there will be 175 modems all running above 9600 bps, and during the second year that number will go up to 250 and than 350 modems during its third year of operation. The Montreal Freenet will most likely end up being one of the most exciting freenet sites around the world because of the two different communities that live there and because of the amount of ressources that is available to the public. <*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*> <*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*> <*><*> <*><*> <*><*> Well, DBE is starting to take its shape. We started out more <*><*> <*><*> like a HPACV group, but we now ressemble more like a group of <*><*> <*><*> "good guys". This dosent mean that we will never release <*><*> <*><*> anything "illegal", it just means that our stuff will become <*><*> <*><*> more "acceptable" by the general public. Yet, we will main- <*><*> <*><*> tain a regular flow of "illegal" products...then again, we <*><*> <*><*> might not. <*><*> <*><*> <*><*> <*><*> Remember: "A man's like clay, molded by his surroundings, he <*><*> <*><*> starts to take shape after the beating and the pounding." <*><*> <*><*> -Urban Discipline, Biohazard <*><*> <*><*> <*><*> <*><*> Members in DBE up to date: <*><*> <*><*> <*><*> <*><*> Source Unknown <*><*> <*><*> No Fear <*><*> <*><*> NightWidow <*><*> <*><*> HellùSpawn <*><*> <*><*> <*><*> <*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*> <*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>