CRYPT NEWSLETTER 47
March 1998

Editor: George Smith, Ph.D.
INTERNET: 70743.1711@compuserve.com
          crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt

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==========================

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Readers of Crypt Newsletter log in monthly from organizations like
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Fujitsu, DuPont, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Boeing,
FermiLab, the US Dept. of the Treasury, the Department of Energy, the US
Naval Undersea Warfare Center, the EPA [?!], Disney [?!?], Oak
Ridge National Lab, Argonne Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley, Vandenberg
AFB, China Lake Naval Weapons Research, the SPAWAR Submarine Command Office,
the Pentagon and many anonymous U.S. military Internet domains that refuse
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Ŀ
 Contents: Crypt Newsletter #47      


 THIS ISSUE

NEWS
Out for rebellion, they settled for lies: Teens make Pentagon squirm
More incomprehensible and inconclusive gossip about emp weapons
Gort! Klaatu Barada Nikto!
The Joseph K Guide to Tech Terminology: source, free speech,
mutual assured annoyance, information wants to be free
Book titles we'd like to see
MISCELLANY
  Credits/Acknowledgment

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

OUT FOR REBELLION, THEY SETTLED FOR LIES: Teenage "Dutch" hackers from
Northern California become Pentagon poster boys for a day or so.

Hackers are invading Department of Defense computers -- again, sayeth
Pentagon apparatchiks, in a spate of stories erupting in the mainstream
media near you.

On Friday the 13th of this month, Defense Electronics magazine featured a
piece entitled "Pentagon looks for answers to massive computer attack." The
massive computer attack by -- you guessed it, unnamed hackers -- comprised
incidents on all of eleven systems.

To put this in perspective, we can go to a recently published book: William
Arkin's "The US Military On-line." Arkin's tome catalogs only those DoD
systems that hang out a shingle -- a Website on-line. These systems
comprise 1,500 sites, even by the author's standard -- a very, very, very
low ball number of the actual sites DoD has connected to the Net. Eleven of
1,500 potential sites yields a hit rate of about 7 tenths of one percent,
which by journalistic and Pentagon standards is a massive attack, but by
common sense standards, is less than statistical noise.

The Defense Electronics piece featured anonymous Pentagon sources (see the
Joseph K definition for "source" this month) leaking that "Dutch hackers"
were responsible, according to the National Security Agency. The "Dutch
hackers" were thought to be doing this in reaction to the U.S. build-up in
the Persian Gulf. Further, they were seizing a computer in the United Arab
Emirates, from which they were basing attacks.

On Wednesday, Feb. 25, Pentagon apparatchiks had backed off on the
Dutch-hackers-in-league-with-Saddam conspiracy theories and substituted it
with a non-specific hacker "contest" just in time for the US media to pick
up the ball. Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, second to Defense
Secretary William Cohen, called it a "hacker game." Hamre offered one good
cliche, one that would be passed on ad nauseum with little wit or
originality in the subsequent media circle-jerk by reporters rather
overfond of their roles as Beltway stenographers: "I think it was, in many
ways, a wake-up call."

ABC's Evening News with Peter Jennings gave the classic example of the big,
dumb news organization passing on the received wisdom of the Pentagon
without providing context, meaning or even a modicum of hard fact. Reporter
Gina Smith delivered a story which did not mention what had been hacked. It
did not mention how many sites had been hacked. It did not mention why this
would be important, if -- indeed -- it was. Smith did, however, trot out a
serious-looking Hamre who repeated the mantra: "I think it was a wake-up
call." Sam Nunn was also deployed to warn of imminent "electronic Pearl
Harbor." (You can read about how Sam has that phrase memorized in the
additional information attached to this piece's "pertinent links.")

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times' Pentagon correspondent, Paul Richter,
delivered a story littered with the same bromides. "Electronic Pearl
Harbor" was invoked, this time from the old Defense Science Board report
"Information Warfare" written by Science Applications International
Corporation mouthpiece, Duane Andrews. ". . . wake-up call" was checked in
by Hamre. "A clear and present danger . . ." said Paul Strassman, another
former Pentagon bureaucrat, who -- perhaps -- should work on finding a less
ubiquitous writer than Tom Clancy for his nuggets of newspeak. [See end
notes.]

Regular readers of Crypt Newsletter will smile in recognition. That's
because they know our bureaucrats and military leaders have been using the
tired "wake-up call" analogy, along with "electronic Pearl Harbor," since
1994. (Actually, make that 1992.) Time to ask the p.r. copywriters for a
new satchel of cliches, don't you think?

Department of Defense sites "attacked" were at Andrews AFB, Maryland;
Columbus AFB, Mississippi; Lackland AFB, Texas; Kelly AFB Texas; Gunter
Annex, Alabama, Kirtland AFB, New Mexico; Port Hueneme ANG station,
southern California; Pearl Harbor; the US Naval Academy, and two systems in
Okinawa.

Investigating the massive attack are -- you guessed it, detectives from the
Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Department of Justice.

Friday, February 27, FBI agents swooped down on the homes of two minors in
Cloverdale, California, north of San Francisco. Although equipment was
confiscated, no arrests of "Dutch hackers" were made.

     ". . . And the joke's on you." -- from the Blue Oyster
            Cult LP, "Secret Treaties."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

End notes:Indeed, The Los Angeles Times' coverage of hacking at the
Department of Defense has been incomprehensibly poor for a publication of
such large resource. The paper continues to hold up the bogus number of
250,000 alleged hacks of Dept. of Defense computers provided by the
Government Accounting Office in 1996 and since debunked by an Air Force
computer scientist who led the briefings to that investigative arm. The
number constituted everything from botched log-in attempts by legitimate
users to trivial "finger" queries from others on the Internet.

In additional news, Pentagon alarums were so absurd they moved a real Dutch
journalist -- the Groene Amsterdammer's foreign editor -- to contact Crypt
News about the scare. Quite sensibly, he was skeptical of Department of
Defense leaks that "Dutch hackers" were rifling the U.S. military to any
great extent.

While much of the mainstream media in the United States seemed taken in by
the story, all of the people Crypt News spoke with were not. And if the
Pentagon's aim was to arouse interest in a problem in need of a drastic
fix, because of the way the media handles these types of stories, it only
ensured the opposite -- that more trivial hacks will be aimed at the
target.

And this is only basic teen psychology.

Think for a moment. If you were a high school or college student and you
saw any of the network television broadcasts of a plump, somewhat
confused-looking Pentagon official issuing declarations of imminent doom to
teams of reporters, you'd be jazzed. Even if you hadn't actually had
anything to do with such trivial hacks, you might even be tempted to boast
that you did on Internet Relay Chat. And if there were any .gov or .mil
sites you knew of at all with compromised security -- even if of no
importance whatsoever -- you would be into them in a New York minute.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

In sort-of related news: DID YOU KNOW Crypt Newsletter is banned in the
United Arab Emirates? It's true. Crypt Newsletter is censored from
inquisitive Web surfers out of Dubai and parts close-by for being a
dangerous Internet publication.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

STILL MORE PRETTY MUCH INCOMPREHENSIBLE, INCONCLUSIVE GOSSIP ABOUT RADIO
FREQUENCY WEAPONS: Dept. of Defense civil servants and one salesman go
before Congressmen to discuss the chupacabras of information space.

Victor von Doom: a.k.a Dr. Doom, an arch villain in the Marvel Comics
universe often portrayed handcrafting a variety of directed energy weapons
-- ray guns -- with which to smite enemies; now used by Crypt Newsletter as
a catch-all designation for computer security snake-oil salesmen and
assorted crackpots spreading freaky tales of non-existent electronic death
rays.

Usage: Victor von Doom, a faculty member at the University of Gobble-Wallah
in Brisbane, Australia, warned frightened businessmen that a raygun capable
of surreptitiously smashing networked corporate computers from a distance
of half a mile could be easily fashioned from parts including a cattle
prod, two potato knishes, one satellite TV dish and four car batteries.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

While Crypt Newsletter thought it would be able to give the legend of the
EMP gun a rest this month, Congress passed a law forbidding such action. On
February 25, Jim Saxton's (R - NJ) House Joint Economic Committee resumed
hearings on the potential threat of the much heard of but still never seen
non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapon.

Indeed, the news of emp is cyclic, coming in waves, usually concomitant
with annual computer security conferences or in this case, last June, when
Saxton conducted similar hearings.

At that time, Congressman Saxton produced an old warrior from the American
arms trade -- Robert L. Schweitzer, a retired general -- who warned of EMP
hand grenades and other munitions leaking from Russia, as well as
electromagnetic ray guns assembled from RadioShack equipment, although no
examples were produced.

But before going further it becomes necessary for Crypt Newsletter to bore
you with the story of the French scientist, Rene Blondlot. Blondlot claimed
discovery of a new form of electromagnetic radiation he called "N-rays" at
the beginning of the 1900s. Since the French were suffering from a brief
inferiority complex over a misconception that their science was lagging
behind that of Germany's -- Max Planck and Wilhelm Roentgen had just made
enormous contributions -- other French scientists immediately took the bit
in their teeth and also began publishing on N-rays. However, by 1904, the
work on N-rays was discredited by an American physicist, Robert W. Wood,
who went to France to observe Blondlot's experiments. Wood secretly removed
a part of Blondlot's N-ray detecting machine and watched as the scientist
claimed to detect them anyway. Although a number of scientists, including
Blondlot, continued to cling doggedly to their claims for a short time,
since their work was irreproducible, it was tossed onto the junk heap of
science where it remains an interesting farrago.

Partly as a result of this, Irving Langmuir, an American physicist and
Nobel laureate, developed a set of laws in 1953 that he said applied to
such stories, which he called "pathological science." Some of them easily
fit the written statements presented to Saxton's Joint Economic Committee,
as we shall see.

Congressman Saxton's panelists included Alan Kehs of the U.S. Army
Laboratories, James O'Bryon, Director of Live Fire Testing with the Office
of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, David Schriner, Ridgecrest,
California; a consultant for the northern Virginia company, Electronic
Warfare Associates and a former engineering technician at the navy's
testing facility at China Lake, California, and Ira Merritt, a scientist at
the Missile Defense Space Technology Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The nut of O'Bryon's written statement is a vague, uninformative reference
to a Joint Live Fire Test conducted against a Cobra gun ship. Crypt
Newsletter did a search of the Net centered around the Economic Committee's
panelists and found a document on the live fire test - entitled "EM
Experiments for Computational Model Validation of AH-1 Cobra Helicopter" --
performed at Junction Ranch on the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center
under the direction of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist,
Scott Nelson. (A hyperlink to it is included in the hypertext issue of the
newsletter.)

O'Bryon's statement, however, mentions neither where the testing was
performed or who was involved. (Interestingly, David Schriner was a China
Lake technician at the trials.) O'Bryon's statement to the Saxton committee
also mentioned nothing of the protocols involved in the test. (Essentially,
they were low power broadcasts of microwaves directed at a helicopter
mounted on a tower ten meters from the broadcast source at the facility's
radar range. This was done in order to obtain empirical results employed to
validate a computer model simulation of the same test. The simulation, once
validated, was supposed to provide information on future weapons platforms
about to enter production. The range would seem to be hardly meaningful as
one at which any potential weapon could be deployed but possibly useful if
one is trying to get a general feel for the vulnerability of such a machine
to a certain type of electromagnetic flux. If Crypt Newsletter is reading
the original report correctly, the test was designed primarily to give
scientists an idea of the cross-section of electromagnetic flux through the
body of a helicopter by the use of radio frequency probes and sensors
arranged throughout the Cobra. Higher power broadcasts were also part of
testing conducted through last summer. The high power broadcasts, again
performed at relatively close ranges -- apparently 10 and 90 meters -- were
done to gain readings of electromagnetic fluxes through the helicopter as
well as gather some idea about impact on the machine. The report says some
measurements were not able to be made because the helicopter remained
"operational all the time." Curiously, most of the test team thought it
prudent to remain "one kilometer" away from the high power microwave
broadcast trailer, even though distance to target was only a fraction of
this. The report also makes a recommendation that future tests of potential
weapons should have to demonstrate some stand-off capability -- ranges at
several hundred meters.

O'Bryon's statement to the Saxton committee said the test produced
"significant results" but did not elaborate. At best, his testimony was
needlessly cryptic since the tests, one of which was presented at a meeting
held at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 1997, are
available on the World Wide Web.

David Schriner's statement alluded to homebrew work he has conducted after
retiring from China Lake and presumably under the auspices of a consultancy
with Electronic Warfare Associates, a Pentagon contractor.

Schriner wrote he had manufactured an emp weapon at home using anywhere
from $200 - $800 worth of sundry electronic equipment salvaged from cars or
a nearby RadioShack. While Schriner did not produce his weapon for
Congressional inspection, he did take the opportunity to make a sales pitch
to the military and emphasize that he already holds the proper security
clearances.

Of all the statements provided for Saxton's hearing, Ira Merritt's was the
most detailed. Merritt goes into the interest in radio frequency/emp
weapons as an consequence of claims emanating from Russia that such weapons
in the form of electromagnetic pulse hand grenades and artillery shells --
were developed.

Central to these claims are the assertions of Russian scientist A. B.
Prishchepenko, who has been delivering lectures on the subject at
international conferences since 1994.

Merrit writes in his statement that the U.S. military sent a team to
Nalchik, Russia, in 1997, to test Prishchepenko's claims.

"The test results," writes Merritt, "left Russian claims unconfirmed, since
most U.S. measurement equipment was not allowed by Russian authorities to
reach the test site and since Dr. Prischepenko's team claimed that the
radio frequency munitions that were tested radiated in a band that could
not be measured with equipment at the site." In essence, it was a wild
goose chase. The science of Blondlot's N-rays was similar. Only Blondlot
could detect his discovery.

Sampling from another report, Merritt writes "There is no confirmed
evidence of employment of a [radio frequency weapon] to date . . .
available in open sources.'

Nevertheless, Merritt's statement does discuss the vulnerability of
electronic components to a variety of electromagnetic pulses. An assortment
of devices that might cause electromagnetic effects at extremely short
ranges are mentioned: A Russian jammer with a range of only five meters --
no quantization of effect given; an electron accelerator called RADAN that
had an unspecified effect on calculators and electronic watches at short
range; and a powerful Russian radar called NAGIRA, purchased by the British
in 1995 -- helicopters warned not to come within "several" miles of it.

It should be mentioned that the short range effects on computer equipment
could just as easily, more effectively and more cheaply be achieved by a
vandal wielding a ballpeen hammer.

In conclusion, Merritt writes, "We cannot now precisely quantify the risk
presented by radio frequency weapons, but we know that risk is growing."

Langmuir's laws of "pathological science," inspired in part by the Blondlot
N-ray experiments, state that the magnitude of the observed effect is
always independent of the intensity. While the detrimental effect of
electromagnetic pulses on electronic equipment has been demonstrated, the
effects attributed to alleged emp or radio frequency weapons are always
widely variant with respect to the scale of the potential weapon. All of
the statements delivered to the Saxton hearings fall into this category.

Another Langmuir law states the "effect" is of something that is close to
the limits of detectability. The U.S. military's attempt to look into the
claims of Prishchepenko neatly fit this law.

And, in another of Langmuir's laws, there are always claims of great
accuracy.

Although Irving Langmuir did not envision this in 1953, one is tempted to
add another law of "pathological science": It comes adorned with a sales
pitch and a classification wrapper.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes:

1. In 1981, Robert Schweitzer was a staffer on Ronald Reagan's National
Security Council -- that is, until he gave a speech to the Army Association
in which he declared the Russians were "on the move" . . . they are going
to strike." Schweitzer was fired and later worked for GeoMilitech, a
Washington arms brokerage. In 1987 Schweitzer again was in the news, this
time with Major General John Singlaub, hunting for lost Japanese gold said
to be sunk near the Philippines.

Last June, Schweitzer spoke extensively about electromagnetic pulse weapons
before Saxton's committee. He started his presentation by seemingly making
a joke about the gaffe that resulted in his 1981 firing. "Now, I am not a
'the Russians are coming' speaker, today," Schweitzer said.

Schweitzer's June testimony alluded to the Live Fire Test against a Cobra
helicopter without specifically mentioning it. [Crypt Newsletter finds this
kind of testimony reflexively secretive and characteristic of the majority
of Congressional discussions held on the subject. Without being an insider,
it's almost impossible for the average citizen to determine precisely what
is discussed, except that it is, of course, menacing and in the good hands
of the military or government.]

During the June hearing, Schweitzer made seemingly contradictory claims
during the course of his presentation. At different times, Schweitzer
claimed that electromagnetic pulse guns could be made for $800, that they
could be made for $35, that they had been used against London banks
although he was informed this was a hoax, and such weapons were now capable
of disrupting Wall Street.

" . . . the cost is about $800 to do this," Schweitzer said at one point.

As for knocking out Wall Street, Schweitzer later commented to Congressman
Saxton, "[It] can be done with going to RadioShack and buying the
components . . . And the prices are from $35 to $200 to buy components and
do a number on Wall Street." Schweitzer also alluded to, but did not
mention by name, a generic hacker tech catalog that claimed to sell parts
and schematics for such a weapon.

Further, Schweitzer testified that London banks were attacked by
radio-frequency weapons, a myth that has been touched on in Crypt
Newsletter.

"I was told that was a hoax," Schweitzer said to Saxton. ". . . and it's
disputed in the Intel community and elsewhere but I think, frankly, and
having gone into this in great detail, the dispute is to protect the fact
it happened."

Schweitzer added later: "I validated [this]. It isn't just taking rumors or
drivel off of the tabloids. These are solid facts that I'm giving you."

Almost without exception, however, Congressional testimony from the June
Saxton hearings reads like gossip.

As an independent example, consider from the same sessions, other testimony
-- presented by author Dr. Peter Leitner on alleged Communist Chinese
"yellow peril"-like subterfuge: "I've heard rumors . . . One I found
particularly disturbing . . . [and] I haven't seen any recorded
documentation of these incidents . . . where very young-looking Chinese
students were going to the United States and placed in high schools in the
U.S. except their ages were 24 - 25 years old . . . They were brilliant
students . . . Well, it turns out it's an example of a sleeper agent,
somebody who is put in position. He already has advanced degrees before
coming in, then is put into the position as a seed and then is allowed to
flourish in a totally unfair competition with U.S. student counterparts."

Don't you take Crypt Newsletter's word for it, though! Secure a copy of
"Economic Espionage, Technology Transfers and National Security" by the
Joint Economic Committee (June 17, 1997, ISBN 0-16-055880-8) for yourself.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. "Red mercury," another alleged product of Soviet weapons scientists is
of some interest when considering testimony on electromagnetic pulse
weapons. As another alleged instrument of terror, red mercury started
showing up in big newspapers around 1991 - 92. Most of the stories, like
every bit of information surrounding the "substance," were never specific
about what red mercury was, except that it was red (Duh!), and a mixture of
mercury (Duh! Duh!) and other materials, maybe tellurium, maybe this, maybe
that, maybe marshmallows. You get the idea.

The kicker was that red mercury somehow, as a new ingredient in fusion
bombs, made it possible for terrorists to make nuclear weapons easily and
shrink their size to that of a briefcase. The descriptions were always
couched in pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

Anyway, all the stories published pointed to the eastern bloc where
smugglers -- always unnamed, and Crypt News has a collection of newspaper
reports that bear this out -- were trying to sell it on the black market as
technology looted from the nuclear weapons shops of the old Soviet Union.
The details in red mercury pieces were always, almost by definition,
indeterminate and vague -- completely unverifiable. However, they made for
great thriller reading.

A good example of the result of this mania manifested itself around
1995-96, when a Beverly Hills writer and former journalist for the Los
Angeles Times and ABC by the name of Ben Sherwood popped up with a book
called "Red Mercury." Hung on the tale of a terrorist who made a bomb from
the material, the book was produced by Dove, a Beverly Hills publishing
house run by Michael Viner and responsible for a tell-all about Hollywood
celebrity hookers, Faye Resnick's take on the life of Nicole Brown Simpson
and the O.J. case, a tattler by Dennis Rodman's ex-wife and other similar .
. .scientific tomes.

Very soon Sherwood was doing interviews and writing the occasional
non-fiction editorial on terrorism, based upon the reputation of the
"research" for "Red Mercury." One which appeared in the Los Angeles Times
addressed security concerns at the Atlanta Olympic games. Ironically, the
sample editorial was based on the plot found in "Red Mercury." Sherwood
also showed up on television as a security expert, selling an identical
message.

"Fiction and reality instantly collided in my brain," Sherwood said to the
Los Angeles Times, in an interview separate from the editorial. "I was
thrust into a very troubling place."

"The hideous red mercury . . . is not a fictional substance . . . ,"
claimed the Los Angeles Times in its Sherwood interview.

Sherwood, and others, never actually explained what red mercury was. In
fact, like everyone else involved as a source, no one could precisely
explain what it was or how it would be fashioned into a football-sized
nuclear weapon with the power to incinerate a Hiroshima-sized city. Of
course, it was a great tie-in for Sherwood's novel, he made a spell-binding
interview and Dove had an excellent talent for timely publicity.

Stories on red mercury finally petered out around 1996.

The lesson from red mercury is that it pays to be skeptical. Tales about
mythological superweapons crop up regularly and satisfy some inner
editorial desire in poor journalists for tales of Tom Clancy-like intrigue.
A dead giveaway is the absolute absence of rational scientific discussion
coupled with anonymous sources, gossip, claims of involvement with criminal
netherworlds and the inability to produce any evidence stronger than
hearsay. Throw in an author of fiction (or, sometimes a concurrent
non-fiction book that reads like fiction) represented as an expert on the
subject while simultaneously cultivating interest in the published work and
you have the icing on the cake.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

GORT! KLAATU BARADA NIKTO!

In Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," actress Patricia Neal
blurts out the title Crypt News is using for this column, essentially
saying to the giant robot, Gort, who is about to destroy the world: "Hey,
Gort, Klaatu says to chill!"

Crypt News can't think of a better sounding title for a collection of short
news pieces that don't fit anywhere else.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This month, a Crypt Newsletter reader stumbled upon bona fide technoquack
Hugo de Garis. De Garis, an artificial intelligence expert in residence at
a laboratory in Japan, appeared on CNN to warn of a coming war in which
robot brains he was in the process of inventing, called "artilects" (a
contraction of "artificial intellects"), would eventually destroy humanity.
De Garis reasoned that it was his duty to sound the alarm now, rather than
later, about the coming reign of robot-administered death, since he was the
one who was going to set it in motion. De Garis delivered his
pronouncements at the recent world economic conference in Davos,
Switzerland.

Anyway, De Garis is also looking for a ghost writer and a Hollywood agent
to aid in writing a science-fiction book and a screenplay on the coming
struggle over "artilects," preferably to be completed before humanity is
destroyed.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next, Crypt Newsletter takes you on a trip to the American Type Culture
Collection (ATCC) in Rockville, Maryland. The ATCC is a global library for
pure microbial cultures contributed by scientists from around the world. As
such, almost everyone who has ever worked with bacteria, fungus, cell
cultures and viruses has benefited immeasurably from it. However, in the
Eighties the ATCC sold an anthrax culture to Iraq, according to a story
late last year by the Washington Post's R. Jeffrey Smith.

Up until the mid-80's it was possible to get anthrax from Gruinard Island
off the northwest coast of Scotland. The British contaminated a portion of
it with anthrax during World War II. The drive to develop anthrax as a
weapon was led by Britain's top bacteriologist, Paul Fildes. In the
Gruinard Island experiments sixty sheep were killed by anthrax spread by
exploding bomb. The dead sheep were flung over a cliff and the cliff
dynamited on top of them. One of the sheep carcasses eluded entombment and
floated across to the mainland where it caused a minor outbreak of disease
near the town of Aultbea. Alarmed, Fildes tried to sanitize Gruinard by
setting its vegetation on fire. This did not work and Gruinard remained
contaminated with anthrax until the mid-Eighties when the government and a
private firm disinfected it with a mixture of formaldehyde and sea water.

Curiously, by searching through the ATCC's list of bacterial cultures
on-line using the name of depositor Paul Fildes one comes up with culture
number 14578, one of a number of strains of Bacillus anthracis. It was this
strain that interested Iraqi scientists in the Eighties, indicating they
certainly knew their microbial history.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The January 19th issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine was
devoted to a series of long articles grouped under the umbrella:
"Information Warfare: Could the U.S. Strike First?"

Aside from the usual quaint bromides from Pentagon employees about blitzing
the enemy with mail-bombs and disk corrupting computer viruses, the series
contained some interesting discussion about the condition black project
secrecy is forcing on military planners. Essentially, the military -- in
its fetish for classification -- has made information warfare programs so
secret that it has stymied effective demonstrations of the technology and
cooperation between people who have the potential to help each other. As a
result, there is seemingly a reasonable lack of confidence that claims
about capabilities can be counted on.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iraq has increasingly turned to American computers sold to it since the end
of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Sold to that country by other nations who
purchased them from U.S. manufacturers, the PCs have been used to store
information on Iraqi military programs.

As a consequence, data of interest to weapons inspectors is thought to be
archived on hard disk and diskettes.

In light of this, many UNSCOM weapons inspectors in Iraq are computer
specialists. And in the very recent past, some U.S. members of the team
have been computer forensic specialists chosen from candidates reporting to
the U.S. Air Intelligence Agency.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDITIONS TO THE JOSEPH K GUIDE TO TECH TERMINOLOGY: Another brief in a
very popular Crypt Newsletter continuing feature.

free speech: something everyone is required to defend, usually when
practiced by the odious or students who've stepped in excrement.

Usage: As he studied the inside of a cramped Santa Ana jail cell, student
Richard Machado concluded that the Orange County jury did not interpret the
explanation that he only wanted to "start a dialogue" with Asian students
when he mass e-mailed them a message that said "I will hunt down and kill
your stupid asses" as a whimsical exercise in free speech.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

information wants to be free: tired hacker slogan formerly denoting that
the flow of information is empowering and cannot be restricted; now a
cliche usually spouted by a variety of dolts who employ it as a
rationalization for ripping off others.

Usage: "Information wants to be free," thought Vice Miskovic, a teenager
from Zadar, Croatia, as he uploaded his Make Money Fast cash pyramid scheme
to the Usenet.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

mutual assured annoyance: the state that exists when Department of Defense
information warriors engage in secret combat with hackers or the
information warriors of other nations.

Crystal often thought about the consequences that might befall him should
his Air Force superiors ever discover that the best result his team of
information warriors could hope for was mutual assured annoyance of the
enemy.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

source: an anonymous lawyer, corporate salesman, Dept. of Defense
consultant, civil servant or Pentagon apparatchik employed by reporters and
editors to pump up flaccid news with impressive quantities of phlogiston.
See phlogiston.

Usage: By employing the clever techniques of information warfare, it will
be possible to remove future dictators from power without firing a shot,
said the Pentagon source to the credulous journalist.

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BOOK TITLES CRYPT NEWS EXPECTS TO SEE

"Anthrax and Plague for Dummies" by Larry Wayne Harris, with a foreword by
U.S. Secretary of Defense, William Cohen (HarperCollins). Harris will go on
a well-publicized book tour that lands him on the front pages of national
newspapers again. At the end of the tour, he makes a startling appearance
on the Howard Stern show. Harris shows Stern a vial of anthrax spores he
claims has been smuggled into the country secreted within the rectum of a
former concubine of Saddam Hussein. Stern tosses it to the fellow who talks
like a crack addict who subsequently snorts it to no ill effect.

"Infowar Games" by many, with forewords by Jamie Gorelick and John Hamre
(Dutton). Sixteen teenagers contribute one chapter apiece on hacking into
Department of Defense Internet servers. Four subsequently confess to making
it all up. Their schools suspend them, anyway.

"Tesla, Mosbauer, RadioShack and the Prishchepenko Equation: The Menace of
Electromagnetic Pulse Munitions That Threaten Us All" by Kapp Corlo and
Glip Popple (Incomprehensible Technology Institute Press). Despite the ace
title, this book sells poorly, interesting only teenagers mentioned in
"Infowar Games" and employees of Pentagon contractors located near McLean,
Virginia.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
===============
Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists for
the, uh, Congressional Heads-up Service. Alan Dunkin for useful
press releases and reprinted media phlogiston.

-------------------------------------------------------------
George Smith, Ph.D., edits the Crypt Newsletter from Pasadena,
CA.

copyright 1998 Crypt Newsletter. All rights reserved.

-------------------

Links relevant to "Out for Rebellion, They Settled for Lies":

   * Hacker fanzine with interview of Cloverdale teen including pro forma
     computer underground gloating.
   * Reports of Dept. of Defense intrusions greatly exaggerated.

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Links relevant to "Incomprehensible Gossip About Radio Frequency Weapons":

   * Written statements given in Saxton's House committee meeting on emp
     weapons.
   * Lawrence Livermore/China Lake low power radio frequency test on Cobra
     gun ship.
   * Lawrence Livermore/China Lake high power radio frequency test on Cobra
     gun ship.

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Links relevant to "Gort! Klaatu Barada Nikto!":

   * The Website of Hugo de Garis, maker of robot brains.
   * The American Type Culture Collection.
   * Washington Post article on Iraqi purchase of anthrax through the ATCC.

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General links:

   * The Crypt Newsletter Joseph K Tech Terminology Guide.
   * Dirty deeds done dirt cheap from "The Virus Creation Labs."
   * Yes, I'm thoroughly ashamed I didn't know all that stuff on virus
     intel mentioned in this issue. Send me to where I can order "VCL."
   * Back to Crypt Newsletter
     Send a comment: George Smith, Editor
