
An Ultimate Chaos Interview 

Victim's Handle: 1nternal 
UC Rep's Handle: Rhape79 
Date: 28 March 

Before we begin is there anything you would like to confess? 

The 'sexlist' link on my site is actually a dropper for Triplicate :), apart 
from that, there is nothing really. 

01. Who are you, what do you do, what kind of music do you like etc.. and how 
did you get your nick? 

Hmm, well I'm a UNI student in Brisbane doing Engineering/IT and get up to all 
the usual crap. My nick comes from trying to quickly decide on a nick during 
an IRC session. At the time, I had a 2880 internal modem so decided on 
'Internal' just temporarily. However I got to know a couple people under that 
nick so decided to stick with it for a while, I altered the 'I' to '1' to 
prevent nick clashes on IRC, only to find that few services accept nicks/names 
etc beginning with a digit :P. Oh well, such is life, and I consider myself to 
carefree to be bothered about it. I enjoy all sorts of music, I have access to 
several hundreds of MP3's over an intranet so can play just about any song on 
demand ;) 

02. Where are you from? 

Brisbane, Australia :), although I travel quite a bit, and I have been based 
in a couple places throughout my VX 'career' :). 

03. How would you describe yourself (eg. mad, antisocial, above average 
intelligence etc..)? 

Very layed back I suppose, I'd sooner be out drinking /picking-up /sleeping 
than doing any work, including writing viruses, however, I am motivated by any 
new ideas that I come up with and would willingly spend a couple hours trying 
to produce a working example of a theory. I am not motivated in the slightest 
to do any work uni-wise, something which will probably be my downfall. I also 
have a serious addiction to the opposite sex and getting drunk, two things 
that can cause quite an interesting mix. 

04. How did you get involved in the VX scene? 

I managed to lay my hands on an advanced book on assembly (quite basic for 
someone who can already code in ASM, but well above the head of any beginner), 
and a shareware assembler (a very old version of A86). I had no idea on how to 
code in assembly, how a virus worked or anything, I also didn't have a 
connection to the internet. So I set it upon myself to design and code an EXE 
appending virus, completely from my own theory of how a virus could work. I 
managed to write RAT.848 a non-resident appending EXE virus (I had to actually 
look up half of the assembly mnemonics cause I had no idea at all, although 
I've always quite quick at picking up new languages), and from there I 
designed a couple polymorphic engines and COM/EXE resident viruses etc, then 
onto the more recent script type viruses (Macro/HTML/VBS etc). 

05. Are you part of any VX team, if so which one(s) and fer how long? 

No, just flying solo. I don't really want to 'officially' become part of the 
virus underground, just contribute any ideas that I might come up with, 
without being actively involved. 

06. How many viruses have you written to date, and which do you feel was the 
'best' one? 

Not too sure, maybe 20 or so. O97.'Triplicate'/'Tristate' is probably my 
favourite, although writing the 'First HTML virus' caused quite a stir, even 
if it wasn't such a big deal. W97.ACM/Nail although not widespread I think 
introduces a new concept which will probably be taken up by viruses in the 
future as well. 

07. What do you see as the future fer yourself (and your team(s))? 

I don't intend to ever officially 'retire' so to speak, although I never 
really considered it a 'job' (ie, I don't and don't plan on being committed to 
the scene in any way) so I may go years without doing anything, I am in no way 
obligated to produce any code or ideas, so I will do as I please. However I 
will keep my site up and may occasionaly add to it if I come up with anything new. As 
my site implies, it is merely an outlet, not an up to the minute update of the 
virus scene, so don't expect it to be. 

08. What languages do you know? 

ASM, C/++, VBscript, VBA, JavaScript probably a couple others not worth 
mentioning, they're all pretty similar and based on the same basic principals, 
a new language can pretty much be picked up in a week or so if its similar to any 
others. 

09. Are there any viruses in particular which you think were good (eg. great 
survival, stealth, encryption etc..)? 

Spanska's Happy99/Ska worm thing is one of the 'viruses' I admire the most. 
It's an ingenious idea and certainly the way viruses of the future will be 
tending towards. I look forward to the next virus which uses similar 
technology, I have no doubts someone somewhere is working on something similar 
and I can't wait to see it. 

10. What do you think of viral payloads - and more specifically destructive 
payloads? 

I personally don't write destructive payloads, but thats more because I 
couldn't be bothered, I try to make my viruses unique in their actual design 
etc rather than just an interesting payload. However I've come to learn that 
even the lamest viruses will get noticed by the press if it does or attempts 
to do something even remotely interesting payload-wise. I don't look down on 
any virus which has a destructive payload, however I do see it as unnecessary 
and if it is no different to any other virus then really the author only gains 
experience in writing viruses, without producing anything new, which could of 
been obtained without writing a destructive payload. 

11. Unique question here - Can you describe the perfect virus? 

Well, no not really, but I'm sure that in this day and age it would have to be 
internet aware, but at the same time capable of infecting computers without a 
connection. It could possibly exploit a feature such as 'sharing' on an 
intranet and upload itself to any writable directory on the intranet. I also 
believe that polymorphism can be taken a few steps further to produce a virus 
which would be pretty much undetectable, at least with current methods. Cross 
platform issues aren't really an issue given the fact that majority of 
computers use Windows, although it would have to be at least compatible with the different versions of 
Win95/NT, as the users of 95,98 and NT is starting to even up. But certainly 
the exploitation of networks and the internet is by far the best spreading 
methods today, as Happy99 shows, it isn't even necessary to really strictly 
infect files at all. I also imagine future macro viruses will exploit this 
even more, probably similar to the methods I've used in W97.ACM (W97.Nail). 

12. What is your opinion of pro-virus members/groups, and why? 

It does promote such things as tutorials etc, however I am more a fan of the 
free-lance approach. Although I have seen some excellent articles from some 
groups which I probably never would have seen if they didn't exist as a group. 
However, many of the older and 'wiser' virus authors in the scene follow the 
common trend of not being involved in any group, if they did, it is probably 
more likely they would no longer be involved. 

13. What is your opinion of anti-virus members/companies, and why? 

I am pretty much unbiased in any way, they are just doing their job. 

14. If Microsoft offered you a job to work on MSAV - Would you take it? 

Certainly, afterall, I'm sure the money would be ok :), I feel I'm mature 
enough to realise this VX loyalty shit is just a bunch of kids trying to be 
'leet, and reality is, lifes just about making green. I think working for an 
AV company would be an ok job, I'd enjoy coming up with ideas on prevention of 
viruses just as much as the development of them. 

15. Are there any pro-virus members/groups you'd like to greet? 

Just anyone who's ever had any interest in viruses, and not been a dickhead 
about it. 

16. Are there any anti-virus members/companies you'd like to greet? 

No, but keep up the good work guys, the next generation of viruses are going 
to be a bitch, whether you like it or not. 

17. This is your bit to say what ever you like (announce your next virus, tell 
us about your team, whatever...) 

Hi Mum. 

Thank you fer taking the time to do this interview. 

Your welcome. :) 
