Interview with SPo0ky
By Horny Toad
[October 1997]

In each of the editions of the Codebreakers magazine, I will be including an interviewer of one our members. Pay attention to what these guys have to say. It may save your life some day. Understanding what goes through our minds when it comes to virii might help you in your quest to become an effective coder. Be careful, it might send you to the funny farm! The first interview that we will start out with is SPo0ky, the commander-in-chief of the Codebreakers. This Austrian mastermind is responsible for organizing the Codebreakers and teaching many members virus writing. He has written many virii from basic overwriting to advanced TSR stealth virii.

What is the main philosophy of the group The Codebreakers?

Hmm... we want to give newbies a helping hand in programming, hacking,...

Another goal is to write NEW code! The good old DOS code has become outdated! In the future editions of our magazine we will write more and more "high-tech" articles like win95 and maybe win98 infections!

Also we want to get a better image for the whole computer underground! Currently we, the virus programmers and hackers, have a very bad image! Justly because of the millions of lamers who have nothing better to do then to "destroy the world" (I mean, there are "hackers" who just want to delete everything on a hacked server, crashing servers,..... I have hacked some servers, but i didn't delete anything! Everything I did was laughing at the funny passwords, looking around on the system and downloading some linux programs that I didn't already have on my computer!)

What is the average experience of The Codebreakers?

most of us are beginners but we also have some VERY experienced members!
Hmm... how i said, it's our goal to help beginners, because...

1) ... they are our future!

2) ... it's just a great feeling to see how win95 users (or win95 lamers) grow up to be reliable (virus) programmers! Some of our newbie members have already written their first virus in the short time they were in our group (without sticking code together or using vcl's! hmm... their first step away from a win95 lamer!!?

What is the average age of the group's members?

sec... have to look at the member list... BRB =)

... exactly 20.75 years...

How many virii has the group written?

we are a very young group so we don't have written lots of viruses yet! currently the virii of the month section of our main page is full with my viruses!

How many do you plan to write in the future?

enough to make McAfee rich!

Do you plan to write virus utilities?

yes, I know they are lame, anyway... currently we (I and arsonic) are writing one...

Why did you choose to leave the Power Empire?

1) because there are too many so called "do nothing people" in it... everybody wanted to join just to be able to say something like "don't fuck with me! i'm in an 37337 H4X0r group!" and only a few people wanted to help me with new ideas, projects (like magazines,...) ...

2) the PE is full of newbies... the goal of the PE was to teach newbies too! But the first leader of the group (King Jebu) made 2 big mistakes:

1) ... he has let TOO many newbies into the group (we had 600 members!)... but he didn't get enough experienced members, so we were not able to teach the newbies!

2) ... he made "factions". We had a hacking-, a virus-, a cracking- and a warez faction. These factions should have made it easier to teach newbies their interests... but what we had were uncontrollable sub-groups! Every faction did what it wanted to do...

3) WaReZ people have taken over the PE... nowadays most "hackers" just want to trade warez (take a look at the 2600 hacking newsgroups to see what shit is going on in todays hacking world)! most of us have forgotten the good old hacker ethics... we should try to gain more and more knowledge, warez has nothing to do with that! What I wanted was a strong, reliable HACKING group and nothing else!

4) A lot of the members only wanted to make "hacker" wars! They just wanted to email bomb(...)! All the hacking groups say things like: "... to protect our members...", WHY? If all the leaders of the hacking groups had a mind we wouldn't have to protect their members because there wouldn't be any lamers who just want to kill each other!

I have ONE chance to correct all these mistakes, The CodeBreakers, a small but strong group without lamers!

How many members do you currently have?

Exactly 20, I think we will remove a lot!
I have learned ONE thing while i was the leader of the PE: "A group with too many people can NOT exist because it is uncontrollable!"

Only groups with a few people can get strong enough to survive!

What is your opinion on virus related newsgroups?

full of idiots, microshit followers (lamers), spam, warez and porn...

Do you think that virii should be freely given to anybody?

Hmm... NO, there are far too many lamers who just want to use them to get back on their enemies!

But it is impossible not to give viruses only to non-lamers, everybody can download viruses from the net (no matter if lamer or not!)... we have to publish our viruses on the net (where else should we do that?)!

Why do you like to write virii?

it's a great challenge to write new, smarter code so that no virus scanner can detect it... and I write them to get an excellent knowledge about computers!

without viruses I would be just another windows freak today!

What do you think about macro virii?

they are easy to write... some are very powerful... but I don't like them because you just have a little bit control over the computer... asm gives you full control over the CPU! this is what I love!

What plans does your group have for infecting Windows 98?

to be the first!

What is your opinion on malicious code?

I don't like it! If someone writes destructive code he must be very bored or he is just a stupid lamer! I think it's ok for newbies to write destructive payloads because:

1) ... they don't have enough knowledge to write a powerful virus, so they write destructive code not to get bored....

2) ... they have to play around with their code... they want to see what they can do with their new knowledge (when i was a beginner i have also written stupid payloads like to delete all A's out of a text file, or to change all 0x20 chars in the autoexec.bat to 0xff chars :).... i think newbies are like little kids who just want to play, they need someone (parents) to "grow up" to sensible people!

Would you drop a member if he wrote destructive code?

hmm... no! I would just try to change his mind...

What is the best way to learn how to program virii?

I don't know... I can only tell you how I have learned it... I have READ 100s source codes of commented assembly viruses... so I got a basic knowledge about assembly. I have collected more and more virus manuals and now I can write more and newer virus code........ I'm still reading/learning whatever I can get.........

How can I become a member of The Codebreakers?

currently at codebreakers.simplenet.com/join.htm or at www.htl-leonding.ac.at/cgi-bin/phf?Qalias=x%0a/bin/cat%20/etc/passwd

Any last words of advice to beginning virus programmers?

don't use windoze! ;)
never give it up! sometimes it's hard but it's a fuckin great feeling when you find your virus/your name in one of the most famous anti-virus products! ;)

Don't attend a course for programming. They will just teach you how to program menu driven programs and shit like that,... They will not show you how to write a C program to get root on a server or how to write a virus! You will have to do it yourself! Believe me, I was in a computer class, they didn't show me anything new!