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CRYPT NEWSLETTER 28
November 1994

Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.)
Media Critic: Mr. Badger (Andy Lopez)
INTERNET: [e-mail]
          [e-mail]
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 [e-mail] 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:  [e-mail]
Online bookstore: [e-mail]
Catbird Press:  203-230-2391; fax: [phone]
                [e-mail]


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: [e-mail]
         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: [phone].<-------
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--------------------------------------------------------------
Editor George Smith edits The Crypt Newsletter from
Pasadena, CA. Andy Lopez lives in Columbia, SC.

copyright 1994 Crypt Newsletter. All rights reserved.