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1993-01-10
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B°rsen
(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.