Clinton Haines/Harry McBungus/Terminator-Z/TaLoN
died from an overdose of heroin

Long-time readers of Crypt Newsletter will be astonished to hear death -- due to heroin overdose -- came to the famous Australian virus-writer Clint Haines on his twenty-first birthday, April 10. He was from Brisbane.

Writing in the Usenet comp.virus newsgroup On April 19, Rod Fewster, a moderator of one of the Fidonet's virus information newsfeeds and one who knew Haines, said:

"Clinton Haines, who earned his place in virus-writing history at the age of fifteen as Harry McBungus, became a household name in the virus world by the time he was eighteen as Terminator-Z and TaLoN . . . [Haines] gained widespread fame a couple of years ago with front-page newspaper headlines yelling about how his No Frills virus had stopped the Australian Taxation Office dead in its tracks for two days, and was regarded by his peers as one of the best virus writers of all time . . . [He] will be cremated tomorrow morning.

"Clint quit virus writing two years ago to concentrate on his university studies and he had the intelligence to go a long way in his chosen field of microbiology, but unfortunately being intelligent doesn't always give you street smarts.

"Clinton Haines/Harry McBungus/Terminator-Z/TaLoN died from an overdose of heroin . . . on his twenty-first birthday."

Haines' interest in controlled substances could be seen in frequent posts to the Usenet where the University of Queensland student waxed enthusiastically on topics ranging from the synthesis of LSD and methamphetamines to his own experiences with Prozac. In April, it all came off the rails, rendering him dead and an acquaintance comatose.

For example, on the date-rape drug, rohypnol: ". . . a friend of mine had 10 rohypnols and a 6-pack, woke up in the lockup with 25 stitches in his head and a broken arm, and couldn't remember a single thing from the last 12 hours . . . turns out he was vandalizing a train seat and the security guards beat the shit out of him . . . then he got off at the next station only to try skateboarding and broke his arm."

On speed and LSD: ". . . I assure you people that LSD and amphetamines are a rather wondrous combination, the ceaseless and energetic progression of thought along a myriad gossamer threads of abstract reality . . . throw nitrous on top of that and you have God mode happening . . . thinking is simply a matter of choosing where you want to go inside your mind and insight/thought rushes abound to the point of not having enough time in which to follow every branch point . . . to the point where your individual thought threads meld themselves into higher denominations . . ."

Haines rambled wildly on his thrill at sniffing laughing gas: ". . . nitrousing out in this state of mind can be wicked because you go so far out on a mental limb . . . sometimes you get to this point where everything becomes completely fluid, not in the physical sense, but one can see, perceive, visualize, etc., every ramification of everything that goes on in the particular mental environment you construct . . . including, say, the passage of a tennis ball under the influence of gravity, or the evolution of an argument and the interplay of multiple factors, even your own thought reasoning . . . when one nitrouses out to a point of total thought fusion, and the concurrent realization/visualization of an extended range of thought capabilities occurs, one gets the rare chance to 'refit' aspects of one's mind, much like getting into newly-washed clothes or something."

And, sadly, on heroin synthesis in a post on September 20, 1996: "WARNING ---- MAKE SURE you cut the rock so produced down to NO MORE than 30% purity -- otherwise you'll end up killing a whole bunch of people . . street-grade heroin is usually in the range of 10-20%, maximum."

The Australian VLAD virus-writing group promptly published a memorial virus to Haines, called "RIP Terminator Z," according to a story by technology writer Julie Robotham in a piece published in the April 29 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Fewster commented to Crypt Newsletter, "[Clint Haines] had a bright future ahead of him, and in my opinion could have done some good in the world if he'd just kept his head together."

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ANOTHER VERY BRIEF TALE OF MYSTERY AND INTRIGUE

Crypt Newsletter, April 1995

Virus-programmer Clinton Haines, a science student at the University of Queensland and native of Brisbane, Australia, makes it into the newsletter this month for making himself the Dark Avenger of Oz.

Over the past three years, "Confusion to your enemies" could have been Haines' motto. Originally known as Harry McBungus, later as Terminator-Z and Talon in Oz-cyberspace, Haines busied himself over a series of viruses which came to be known as the NoFrills/Dudley family.

Around 1991, one of the first of the NoFrills viruses, X-Fungus/PuKE, heavily infected SunCorp, a government-operated insurance company which has since been privatized. SunCorp, which employs quite a bit of Novell software, found its networks blasted off-line by NoFrills and the event splashed into Australian newspapers.

According to members of virus-writing groups with which Haines was associated, he took the opportunity to contact local newsmen who subsequently turned over his identity to just about anyone who wanted it. Following the SunCorp incident, Haines was interviewed by Australian federal agents. During the free-for-all, according to other virus writers, the inventive Haines attempted to stymie the investigation by informing his interrogators that Terminator-Z and Harry McBungus were the names of different computer hackers who had written viruses mistakenly attributed to him.

Around the same time, Haines applied for membership in the predominantly North American virus-writing group, NuKE . Paradoxically, Haines had written the original X-Fungus/PuKE/NoFrills virus which struck SunCorp with an eye toward satirizing the same band of hackers.

Another of the NoFrills viruses - named Dudley - then found its way into PC networks operated by Australian Telecom, sufficiently incommoding the company so that the Australian federales were again summoned. This led to squabbling, recriminations and an eventual falling out with Haines' North American cybercolleagues who evidently became suspicious the Australian was trying to thrust the notoriety for the Dudley debacle onto them. The complete source code to a Dudley variant, the Daeman virus, was immediately released into the public domain of cyberspace in the electronic publication, NuKE Infojournal, edited by the North American group. Since then Haines has advertised an on-again-off-again relationship with the same group of virus programmers he pretends to make fun of.

In early March of this year, the Dudley virus again fritzed Australian networks, this time those belonging to the Australian Taxation Office. This was seen as tactically unfortunate, since Haines had claimed retirement from virus-writing. The Australian Taxation Office is regarded as balefully as the IRS in the United States.

However, Haines reputation as a virus-writer in international cyberspatial circles remains solid, even gaining in stature. Rod Fewster, an Australian representative of the Dutch Thunderbyte anti-virus software company, had befriended Haines, recognized Harry McBungus' technical brilliance as a virus writer and publicly mused on the Fidonet on the consequences of infecting the Australian Taxation Office and it getting in the way of a good programming career. Recently, Qark, another Australian virus-writer, informally commented that it was his opinion Haines was, in all respects, a world-class virus programmer and that it was Harry McBungus' original appearance in the Australian press at the time of the SunCorp/X-Fungus incident which inspired him to take up his present hobby as a programmer of software of the same nature.

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YOUNG, FAST & SCIENTIFIC: AUSTRALIAN VIRUS WRITER NO NERD -- ENJOYS RUGBY, DAD A TENNIS PRO COACH

Crypt Newsletter, April 1995

by Peter Young

Old Clint Haines blew his cover in February after the Dudley virus hit so my [original] promise to keep his ID to myself is null and void.

Clint wrote a virus called K-Mart [sometimes refered to as X-Fungus] under the name of Harry McBungus in late 1991 and in February 1992 it infected the largest financial institution in Queensland, Suncorp, forcing the organization to quarantine 100 workstations and 12 servers while it purged the virus. The virus escaped into the wild because Haines had a habit of giving diskettes containing it to schoolmates he didn't like. He later refined it and in its next incarnation it was tagged No Frills. A version of No Frills hit Australian Telecom's International Business Offices almost a year to the day after the Suncorp infection. Telecom had to isolate and rebuild 1000 PCs on Novell networks.

Coincidentally or otherwise, the No Frills/Dudley attack on the Australian Tax Office this year again took place in February.

Haines was 15 when he wrote the original Suncorp virus, referred to on this piece as K-Mart. He's well over six feet tall, plays the Aussie version of gridiron - that's rugby - and bears no resemblance to the skinny nerd of stereotypic virus writer legend. He's come up through private schools and is the child of separated or divorced parents. His dad is a tennis pro coach. Haines doesn't regret writing the NoFrills viruses but does rue that his association with them may cost him the option of a career in computing. He told me his first reaction when a new No Frills hit is reported is a surge of delight that it's still out there working its magic and hasn't been retired to a virus museum or old folk's home. On the heels of the thrill comes an anxiety attack while he wonders whether some hammer is about to fall on him. He's 19 and an undergraduate taking a science degree at the University of Queensland. He's majoring in biochemistry and . . . here's a scary thought . . . thinks biological viruses are fascinating.