CRYPT NEWSLETTER 37 May - June 1996 Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.) Media Critic: Mr. Badger (Andy Lopez) INTERNET: 70743.1711@compuserve.com crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu NOTE: Subscriptions to Crypt Newsletter can now be had for $10 US for one year. Checks and money orders to the editor at 1635 Wagner Street, Pasadena, CA 91106 along with a current electronic mail address where you wish to receive your issues of Crypt Newsletter. Crypt Newsletter articles may not be reproduced in or on other media without consent of the editor. Rates based on word count are reasonable. Queries by e-mail are welcome. 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� � Contents: Crypt Newsletter #37 � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� THIS ISSUE BOOKS "Breakthrough:" The words of prophets aren't written on the walls of CompuServe "American Extremists:" More words on Lyndon LaRouche "The Future Does Not Compute:" One author's image of the Inferno Mars attacks: Los Alamos guru featured in "Washington Babylon" NEWS Myth builders: GAO hackers report breaks wind Some comments on NCSA Virus Prevention Con '96 Kevin Mitnick plea bargains The endless river of H/P/A/C/V and you MISCELLANY Letters page Crypt Newsletter Hypertext Crypt Masthead Info Credits/Acknowledgment THE BUILDING OF MYTHS THROUGH CAREFUL STUDY "It is a great art to know how to sell wind." -- Baltasar Gracian The beginning of Summer has delivered a box load of public announcements on the growing horror of ill-defined hacker menace. Ever since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government has been madly casting about for new enemies to take the place of the old bogeymen in the Politburo. At various times Third World nations have been suggested. However, U.S. citizens are uninterested in thugs from Somalia or Balkan butchers. They are loutish, messy, and lacking in ICBM fields, B-52s or other obvious means of projecting power or violence beyond their territories. Terrorist groups domestic and international have been sought, too. Unfortunately, the Japanese cult of nerve gas manufacturers has proven unstable as have the U.S. militias. The militias also have had the gall to hole up in isolated farm houses while surrounded by regiments of FBI agents. The pictures at ten fail to move the populace to panic, instead provoking laughter and ridicule or the vague suspicion that government employees are overdoing it. However, bands of hackers have proven far more durable and roadworthy. This is because they are being cleverly sold as capable of raping and pillaging the archdukes of capitalism simply by pushing a few buttons from the refuge of a faraway land or county. It is the closest anyone has been able to come to the symbolism of ICBMs and computerized launch codes. Hackers are good at making mechanisms, too. Small boxes utilized for the purposes of defrauding everyone's nemeses, the telephone companies, are now metamorphosing into bigger boxes. The recent issue of FORBES ASAP featured a number of menacingly posed fellows on its cover who consented to be avuncular bogeymen for a roundtable of editors. They spoke of weaponry like remote mass automatic garage door openers, HAM and short wave radio snoopers which allow one to eavesdrop on and speak through fast food restaurant drive-up speakerphones or those small walkie-talkie systems sold as baby monitors in catalogs like THE SHARPER IMAGE. Electronic death ray projectors called HERF guns were discussed. No one seems to have actually seen a HERF death ray but few people ever got to see a real ICBM or a shell loaded with sarin, either, so the point Crypt Newsletter attempts to make is probably moot. The Senate subcommittee on investigations was also hard at work this month publicizing a 63-page Government Accounting Office report entitled "Information Security: Computer Attacks at Department of Defense Pose Increasing Risks" on the threatening world of computer saboteurs and hacks on DoD networks. But the Government Accounting Office's report (GAO/AIMD-96-84) promised a lot more than it delivered. Disappointingly, Crypt noted it proved to be an extremely general discussion of hackers leavened with a lot of unsupported conjecture. A look at it convinced Crypt that anyone wishing to know anything real about computer hacking incidents would be better served by going to a good bookstore and purchasing copies of "The Hacker Crackdown," "The Cuckoo's Egg" and "Firewalls and Internet Security." Long segments of the GAO treatise also retold -- much less effectively -- news stories that have appeared in the media in the last five years. For no apparent reason other than to provide "what-if's," the GAO republished the tale of a scary Rand information warfare gaming exercise reported in a August 21, 1995 cover story for TIME magazine. It read as fiction. The GAO paper also anonymized and failed to properly cite the perfectly precise and specific story of Bill Cheswick and Steve Bellovin's tangle with the Dutch hacker "Berferd" in 1991 (and published in their book, "Firewalls and Internet Security.") In the report, much is also made of a two year old incident at the Air Force Material Command facility in Rome, New York. Although the republic was not harmed, GAO and the military assessed the difficulties caused by the hack to have set the Department of Defense back $500,000. Jack Brock, the congressional General Accounting Office's point man on its hacker report, said in related congressional testimony: "Terrorists and other adversaries now have the ability to launch untraceable attacks from anywhere in the world. They could infect critical systems with sophisticated computer viruses, potentially causing them to malfunction." Yes, and it is easy to imagine that this statement would come as a very bitter surprise to Christopher Pile, a real British hacker who cast his SMEG viruses into the computer underground. Of course, he turned out to be far from "untraceable" and is now serving a year and a half jail sentence on charges having to do with his comings and goings in cyberspace. The GAO reports DoD computers "may" have been the target of assaults in the last year. Later on in the text, it is cited that there were 559 "officially reported" incidents in 1995. Very little meaning can be extracted from these figures since no real methodology on their derivation is presented. For example, would 250,000 assaults include Crypt Newsletter using telnet to bring up a network address reprinted in a nonfiction book on UFO's and finding that it was PENTAGON-AI.ARMY.MIL, a restricted site? A recent Washington Post article on the GAO/hacker/DoD congressional hearings also mentioned other reports which have built scenarios for effect. To wit: although FAA traffic control computers are safe because they are old, complicated and rickety, it is theoretically possible that future replacements would prove to be playgrounds for malicious but invisible hackers. The metaphor of the popular movie was also used to make a point: In "The Net" a hacker changes the medical records of the Secretary of Defense at the Bethesda Naval Center. Readers are asked to think of this as real. Work published by the Computer Security Institute projects the hacker menace onto US corporates, too. Forty two percent of 428 respondents to a poll insist they've been hacked within the past year. The respondents are invisible. Always shielded by layers of confidentiality and anonymity we do not grant victims of sex offenders, corporate victims are said to speak of computer evil-doers. Science Applications International Corp., a giant think tank and Pentagon contractor pulls out of Congressional hearings on criminal hacking. "We have non-disclosure agreements with our clients and we were not given clear and absolute assurances that under questioning we wouldn't be expected to violate those nondisclosure agreements," said a mouthpiece for the organization. Many, many foreign countries -- "more than 120" -- appeared to have hackers whom at one time or another try their hands on Department of Defense systems, Mr. Brock said. According to the news, he added the National Security Agency knew which countries these were but this was classified information. Secret. None of your business even though you paid for it. Invisible. Crypt phoned Mr. Brock in an effort to shed more light on the data in his report but he said he couldn't discuss anything about it with anyone, particularly over the telephone. Mr. Brock said the NSA had presented the data to him but had sworn him not to talk of it. Crypt felt sorry for questioning Mr. Brock because his style made it clear he was a little bit frightened of the mandarins at the NSA. One received the distinct impression that Mr. Brock felt that even if the simple words "hacker" or "computer virus" were mentioned on an open line too many times a bad thing might happen. It was like the reading of a horror novel by H. P. Lovecraft. If the wrong word were invoked an unspeakable creature might be summoned from the Arkham of Ft. Meade, one that could mutate the careless utterer of it into a many tentacled fish-frog. In seriousness, perhaps a bad thing could occur. A career could be smudged over something as simple as candor in a three minute phone chat. Mr. Brock also said a number of odd things. He said that there had been information presented by the NSA of varying sensitivity and there had been no decision on how it should be classified. So no blanket classification had been made but still no one could speak of it. "I'm not a good source," said Mr. Brock. Then he repeated it: "I am not a good source." What? But if not the GAO investigator, then who? Of course, the answer is a circular argument. The NSA was the final source -- that's who. Well, Crypt Newsletter readers no longer believe the standard bromides delivered by intelligence agencies. They know that excessive classification or gag orders are an indication of someone wishing to hide data that qualifies the publicized announcement, to disguise plagiarism from open sources, or cover up incompetence and outright fraud. Wrestling with invisibles, or symbols, was always what the Cold War was about. No one except an obscure lunatic named T. K. Jones in the Reagan administration really thought that either U.S. generals or their Soviet counterparts would call down the wrath of 10,000 nuclear warheads. Yet the symbol of the nuclear-tipped missile remained the stone tablet of the religion of geopolitics, a totem that could be successfully shaken at newspapers, Congressional meetings and international summits. Hackers are a totem of great power, too. For a short period of time, Kevin Mitnick became the 1995 equivalent of Muammar Ghaddafi, at least in newspapers and on TV. Unknowable and unknown, his image - that of a menacing-looking cypher in thick glasses - was an appropriately fearful symbol to some. When the Mitnick-Ghaddafi turned out to be normal looking months later, no one cared anyway. Tsutomu Shimomura, like US F-111s, had already been dispatched to banish the Mitnick-Ghaddafi to the trashpits of Gehenna -- in this case city jails in North Carolina and Los Angeles. Shimomura, it turned out, appeared to have missed the real target but the F-111s sent to mail the Ghaddafi menace C.O.D. to Allah missed, too, and media history has been kind to both affairs. The Mitnick-Ghaddafi, said those with the loudest voices, at one point in the dim past might have been able to start World War III by diddling computers in Cheyenne Mountain. They were confused by Hollywood and appeared to believe that a teen movie called "Wargames" actually featured the Mitnick-Ghaddafi. Since the Mitnick-Ghaddafi had neither a press agent or a constant address he was certainly hard to find and not in much of a position to clarify matters. This worked against him and for the forgers of symbols and the tellers of tales. If Mitnick had possessed the wit to walk into a TV studio the day after his face showed up on the front page of The New York Times or to spend $500 dollars for a couple of news releases on the PR Newswire, his career as a religious totem used to scare and thrill the citizenry would have been over long before media momentum and book sales transformed him into a myth. From virus writers to Internet marauders the average computer d0od who fancies himself a successful hacker has never understood the mechanisms of media symbolism. Invariably, the hacker can always be lured into exaggerating his impact upon the republic by appropriate blandishments from reporters in the mainstream media. In need of a malevolent sounding man to portray as a dangerous computer-master weirdo? Place a query on the Internet and the editorial phone will ring off the hook. From the perspective of the hacker this seems like an attractive deal. He gets to tweak the nose of suits, make Congressmen scurry about at the behest of the NSA and cause the neighbors to keep the cat in at night. Power! Celebrity! The euphoria lasts until the inevitable story is published and a couple hundred thousand people read it. The reality of this leaves the interviewed computer jockey feeling nervous and cheated. He has been cast as a hideous but banal carnivorous ogre, not a cool clove cigarette-smoking anti-hero. If a photo is published it will invariably be the one that was the product of an atrocious camera angle, the one that made him look like a creepy slug or Doctor Octopus. Locals may be sufficiently frightened by this image to consider mustering a party to slay the ogre. Instead of getting on the cover of People, it has become time to lay low at the job, to change one's phone number or to ask the parents to fund a sojourn at an anonymous state university. The hacker so treated finds his life transformed as if by a philosopher's stone. But instead of being transmuted from lead into gold, the media has cruelly turned him into just a different isotope of lead -- that of the pariah. Malicious hackers are a fact of life. Some of them break into systems or write viruses that spread around the world. Some of them get away with a lot. But the lesson to be learned is not that they can smash the republic or loot corporate treasure. Rather the lessons are the stories of Kevin Mitnick, James Gentile, Chris Pile, Kevin Poulsen, Phiber Optik or whomever is the newest flavor of the week in the myth business. One can count on, at the least, family embarrassment and the inability to conduct one's future affairs in private or, at worst, a criminal record based, in part, on wind and an image that becomes a radical millstone in conservative times. Notes: 1. The quote from Science Applications was taken from a story in the June 6 issue of the Washington Post: "U.S., Private Computers Vulnerable to Attacks by Hackers, Study Says" by Elizabeth Corcoran. 2. More on the GAO's "untraceable" hackers who were into Air Force Material Command computers in Rome, New York: On Monday, June 23, Reuters reported that one 21-year-old Mathew Bevan, a computer technician, had been charged with conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers and conspiracy to cause unauthorized modification to computers." Further, one Richard Pryce was previously charged with using a computer in his bedroom in north London to tap into several U.S. Department of Defense systems over a period months. Reuters reported Pryce and Bevan were arrested after a lengthy search initiated by the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Investigations. "BREAKTHROUGH": THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS AREN'T WRITTEN ON THE WALLS OF COMPUSERVE Whitley Strieber wrote the ultimate book of alien encounters in 1987. Called "Communion," it was a perplexing story regardless of its veracity. Strieber recounted a number of alien experiences that were ghastly but eventually enlightening. Many readers became completely entangled in its web of alien visitation/UFO hallucination and the hardback quickly rose to the top of the bestseller lists. Predictably, media reaction to "Communion" was violent and negative. "Report on 'Communion'" by Texas reporter Ed Conroy attempted to redress the imbalance by researching Strieber's background. Conroy portrayed Strieber as a thoughtful man of letters whose childhood was typified by an extremely vivid imagination and a boyish sense for practical jokes. In "Report on Communion" Conroy produced debunkers and friends and expounded on the history of fairies and other legends. By the end of the exhausting read Conroy mentioned that as a result of his work he was also convinced he had been an abductee. In Strieber's book, the author mentions Conroy suffered professionally for admitting this. In "Breakthrough" (HarperCollins Spotlight), Strieber reiterates the image and character of the aliens evoked in "Communion." Strieber has always been a fine writer and the book's strongest parts are weird, sometimes gripping excursions into the nature of reality and the author's visitors. The book is divided into three sections which discuss further visitations, Strieber's ride in a flying saucer and an outline of UFO lore. Area 51, sightings, the alien autopsy, the giant face on Mars -- all are there and jive with the themes beloved by viewers of the "X-files" (it's no accident "X-files" merchandise and books are advertised in the paperback's ad pages) and alien/Pentagon conspiracy literature. Strieber claims, too, that intelligence agencies have been out to harass him for his writings. His house in upstate New York, he says, was broken into and his computer sabotaged with a virus. Near the end, Strieber veers from unbelievable stories of alien visits for a moment to make an impassioned argument against excessive classification and secrecy practiced by the federal government. "There are so many nooks and crannies, so many power centers, so many secrets," he writes. Strieber laments that the literature on UFO's and aliens is rife with disinformation. Ironically, this got Crypt's attention but probably for the wrong reasons if one looks at it from the perspective of the true believer. Strieber published an electronic document in "Breakthrough" called "hacker.txt" which purports to be a list of secret military Internet sites involved in hiding information on UFO's and alien visitors. It is common in cyberspace, Strieber says, and can be retrieved from CompuServe's NewAge and UFO forums (this is accurate, I found a copy there). Originally published in Computer underground Digest 5.13 as an example of the type of literature, it is plainly a hoax, in style much like things like the "Good Times" virus. The meat of it is a list of Internet sites, classified according to Strieber, that divvy up into Pentagon, Utah, Nevada and California locations. It took about five minutes of work to blow a hole in its tissue of electronic phlogiston and Crypt wonders why editors at HarperCollins Spotlight, "Where Nonfiction Shines," didn't help out a little on the original manuscript for the sake of a reputation. Moreover, why couldn't Strieber have figured this out for himself? For example, the "Sensitive Compartmented Information Network" -- a top secret site, corresponds with a computer at Boston University. I talked to a nice lady network administrator there and she laughed and assured me BU hadn't opened any branch campuses near Area 51 or Wright-Patterson AFB. On a slow Friday afternoon, she was amused to find BU computers as bit players in a book on alien visitation. A long list of "military Internet sites" purported to be part of a "top secret network" in Nevada are really in Deutschland: at the University of Stuttgart, the Berufsakademie Mannheim, the Hessian center for "Datenverarbeitung" in Wiesbaden, a "Fachhochschule" on Jakob Street in Albstadt and assorted computers in Berlin. Someone should please tell HarperCollins that the words of prophets aren't always written on the walls of CompuServe. More recently, Streiber held an on-line conference on the commercial network where he spoke of alien implants. There was brief discussion on whether civilian discovery on the true nature of these devices might trigger extraterrestrial retaliation. "Breakthrough's" author mentioned we might already be subjugated and the US government was hiding the fact. Strieber indicated he was moving to San Antonio where he planned to have an implant of his own removed by surgeons. Streiber was going to attempt to have it analyzed and report his findings in the coming year. Additional notes: In "Breakthrough," Strieber infrequently mentions being treated hatefully by journalists. One anecdote involves a free-lance writer whom Strieber says mailed him a set-up concerning alien visitation as part of a muckraking project and then accused the author of being a cult leader. Strieber subsequently sued him for defamation. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Strieber is referring to Stuart Goldman, a southern California-based writer who broke into the national news prominently when he became embroiled in a criminal investigation over an inept hacking incident at Fox Television. In March of 1990 Goldman was arrested and arraigned in federal court in Los Angeles after his apartment in Studio City had been searched and his computer seized. Charged in California and New York, an affidavit filed on him by federal prosecutors said Goldman had made several attempts -- at least one of them successful -- to enter Fox computers and download files regarding news stories worked upon by Fox TV's journalists. Goldman had worked previously as a free-lancer for Fox's "A Current Affair" according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. Fox employees in New York discovered in 1989 that someone had been trying to access their computers and complained to the US Secret Service. The Los Angeles police became interested after the Secret Service became involved. Around the time of his arrest, Goldman had been pitching an expose on the tabloid news show he worked on to the Los Angeles Times. As the case unfolded in newspapers, Goldman claimed Fox was trying to silence him for threatening to expose its tabloid news show's journalistic methods. Fox retaliated by claiming Goldman had been trying to sell story ideas purloined from Fox computers to other outlets. Part of this proof was alleged to be a computer file on Ron Reagan, Jr's "lover" which Fox claimed had been planted as part of the investigation to ensnare Goldman. Goldman was said to have attempted to sell the story idea to the Boston Globe. Fox claimed Goldman had been using the password of an "A Current Affair" employee named Riva Dryan. Subsequently, computer activity at the network was monitored. Intrusions on Dryan's password were observed for a period of time, telephone traces made and the calls traced to Goldman's apartment in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times reported that investigators claimed Goldman had copied the bogus Ron Reagan, Jr. tip to his own computer. The story was complicated by the fact that Goldman had worked for "A Current Affair" and split acrimoniously with the show over its handling of a segment he was working on for it concerning Whitley Strieber's UFO abductee followers. Goldman battled with Fox over the segment -- which never aired -- and then took the scoop to rival "Hard Copy." "Hard Copy" ran a segment based on the UFO story which, in turn, triggered a Goldman debate with Strieber on CBS's "Good Morning America." On the show, Goldman likened Strieber to Guyana cult leader Jim Jones. Strieber protested and then filed his defamation suit. Ironically, Ted Kost, the private detective hired by Strieber to serve Goldman process papers wound up being hired by Goldman to investigate the LAPD's case against the reporter after Strieber dropped his defamation charge. In 1991, Goldman pleaded no contest to the felony charge of unauthorized access to a computer system. He was placed on five years probation and ordered to pay $90,000 to Fox, reduced to $12,000 on Goldman's plea that he was "indigent." Deputy District Attorney Richard Lowenstein asked for dismissal of four additional counts of unauthorized computer entry and Los Angeles Superior Court judge Richard Neidorf warned Goldman that if he continued to use computers to get himself into trouble he would wind up in court again. LYNDON LAROUCHE, REVISITED: BLAME IT ON BRITISH SPYMASTERS AND JEREMY BENTHAM Those who tuned into Crypt's last offering recall our brief jaunt to Lyndon LaRouche's Web site on the Internet. Drawn to it by a 30-minute prime-time broadcast on CBS earlier this year, "the world's foremost economic theorist" and Presidential candidate commented on economic doom, called Newt Gingrich and his followers "Hitler-type criminals" and drew them all into a hard to follow warren of malevolent conspiracy linking Wall Street bond marketeers, members from the Bund of the media elites, powermad elements said to be lurking in British intelligence and Chinese nuclear-tipped missiles. LaRouche's antipathy toward the British was also in high evidence on his Web page. He claimed they were responsible for a large portion of the bad taste rampant in the western world! And, of course, it is impossible to forget the LaRouche tenet that Queen Elizabeth was a "drug pusher." Crypt found some of this difficult to grasp but a new book by John George and Laird Wilcox, "American Extremists" (Prometheus Books), sheds some light on the issue in a chapter on the LaRouche network. "LaRouche's animus against the British greatly stems from his view that Aristotelianism (as advocated by the British [empiricists . . . John Locke, Jeremy Bentham . . .] is responsible for many of the ills of society. By applying Aristotelian thought to ethics, says LaRouche, one gets moral relativism -- the idea that one system belief is as valid as another. This is anathema. Further, "according to LaRouche, the 'oligarchs,' the wealthy British families are disciples of Aristotle and his intellectual tradition. They use his methodology in a conspiracy to keep the masses uninformed about the true nature of reality and helpless against their nefarious machinations." "I see," said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw. Anyway, ""American Extremists" is a tremendous book. It explains the impenetrable metaphysics of many fringe Americans from the far left and right. As well as being extremely detailed and expert, it's also greatly entertaining in its chatty tales of unusual people. The lives of the extreme tend to be, uh, extreme and it's difficult not to break a smile while reading the history of them. Turning back to LaRouche, we find that he is one of the most sophisticated of American extremists. If his writings are to be taken seriously, his philosophies are mercuric amalgams of the left and right. Wilcox and Laird write -- by way of George Johnson's book "Architects of Fear" -- that this fusion stems from LaRouche's unusual conspiracy beliefs: "[LaRouche's] politics are so complex that he has been simultaneously accused of being funded by the CIA and KGB. LaRouche counts among his enemies not only international bankers, the Federal Reserve System, and the Trilateralists, but also Ken Kesey, Bertrand Russell, Playboy magazine, Isaac Newton, the Nazis, the Jesuits, the Zionists, the Socialist International and the Ku Klux Klan." Followers of LaRouche have a history of being very loyal to the man. Many of them are still with him, even after he changed abruptly and swung hard right from early days as a Trotskyist. LaRouche runs a headquarters in Leesburg, Virginia, where computers whir behind locked doors and bulletproof glass. From Leesburg, LaRouche works on a plan to install a new world order based on the views of LaRouche. LaRouche's Schiller Institute promotes the view held by him and his wife that classical German culture is superior. LaRouche offices feature a piano room with music from German composers and German posters. In early writings, LaRouche speaks of the wide-ranging role he plays in followers' lives. He warned them as far back as 1973 that devotion to him would involve some stress. "In respect of the mental processes, absolutely nothing is secret; there is merely blindness. . . . In Germany I am Der Abscheulicher (the abominable one); I shall soon be regarded similarly here," he said. In "The Politics of Male Impotence" in 1973, LaRouche said that he had set up a European base "on the premise that our growing importance in the world would close borders to me very soon." According to an article in the Los Angeles Times in which the prior anecdote appeared, "All Germany is a heaving mass of sexual impotence," LaRouche wrote. When federal agents raided his Leesburg compound in 1986 prior to a lengthy trial that eventually put him in jail on fraud charges, LaRouche claimed that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had called for the raid as a precondition for a superpower summit that had just been concluded. According to LaRouche, the demand included a plan to kill him. "This is the truth, and anything contrary to what I have just stated is false," LaRouche wrote. "The man with the mark of the beast on his head, [Mikhail Gorbachev], has demanded my elimination." More on the swizzled politics and activities of Lyndon LaRouche is left for another day. However, those unwilling to wait can satisfy themselves with "American Extremists." "THE FUTURE DOES NOT COMPUTE": ONE AUTHOR'S IMAGE OF THE INFERNO In 1984 the pungent Lewis Lapham wrote a parable about the age of high tech wrapped around the story of the Turkish sacking of Constantinople in 1453. ". . . the Byzantine emperor Constantine Palaeologus, accompanied by priests and a choir of the faithful, made a solemn embassy to the church of Saint Theodosia to pray to the martyr whose relics were believed to contain the powers that subsequent generations have learned to attribute to the hydrogen bomb [or the computer.] Having assigned his kingdom to the bones of a saint, the emperor died the next morning with those few of his followers who took the trouble to meet the Turks on the city walls. Most of the emperor's subjects chose to remain in one of the city's churches, trusting to the miracles of religion rather than to the force of their own courage and arms. When the Turks broke down the doors of Saint Sophia, they found 10,000 people earnestly praying in a sanctuary sweet with the smell of incense and fear." The Turkish story lent itself, he wrote, to the mania surrounding high tech, the desire to put oneself blindly in the trust of a totem -- the computer chip. If a school administrator is shown to order computers for a few classrooms, the students are automatically deemed educated. If the business guru utters any "holy words" that rhyme with "onics" or "echnics," the unwashed recipient of the wisdom is "ushered into paradise." It has been a source of continued aggravation to Crypt Newsletter to find that this type honest, lacerating appraisal and criticism of the cult of information comes only from outsiders to it. Painfully, there has never been a corresponding shortage of Alvin Tofflers or like-minded lieutenants. Crypt suspects this probably has something to do with the reality that most people in computing who are capable of writing with some degree of acumen on the subject are so in fear of being reduced to a gaberlunzie by the wrath of a patron or boss that they can never see clear to take on such a project. This brings us to Stephen L. Talbott's "The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines In Our Midst" (O'Reilly & Associates). Talbott is an editor for O'Reilly and as an insider he's done such a commendable job that he will never again have to worry about being in the bibliographies of the Nick Negroponte's of the world. "Does Not Compute" is a considered discussion that bravely publishes crushers like "our rush to wire the world will some day be seen to have spawned a suffering as great as the world's greatest dictators." Presented only as one nugget from as thorough a book as DNC, Crypt imagines the sentence bugging typical Net surfers mightily. Of course, the easily bugged aren't this book's audience. For that matter, neither are the oceans of lip-readers found on on-line services. However, DNC is a pearl of great price. Talbott's vision of a future where not firmly coming to grips with computing technology as it relates to actual need and essential human concerns results in being communally roasted slowly in the pit for it can already be seen in many areas of American society, particularly corporate culture. "A global electronic culture can, in one sense or another, bring about a union of peoples," Talbott writes. "The question is whether this union only offers a less visible . . . communal dissociation . . ." NCSA VIRUS PREVENTION CON '96: ASSORTED COMMENTS At a recent meeting of computer security gurus in Washington, D.C., one prominent anti-virus software developer and researcher surprised competitors by claiming the industry and its products would have trouble remaining afloat in the next five years. Too much time had been poured into designing software to detect thousands of computer viruses that existed only in research labs or the hands of a few obscure hackers. Users had been sold on the idea that only numbers mattered. The more crazily named computer viruses claimed detected, the better the software. However, a funny thing had happened on the way to this goal. Instead of technology developing to improve performance, programs had become harder -- even an annoyance -- to use, less effective, slower. Joe Wells, the keeper of the computer virus WildList presented these claims in an interesting paper published at the National Computer Security Association's Virus Prevention conference on April 2. Called: "Reality Check: Stalking the Wild Virus," the paper begin with three questions that were quite critical of current trends in the industry. 1. Has the anti-virus industry done users a major disservice? YES, wrote Wells. It did itself a similar disservice by pouring to much time, effort and money into products that could be smaller faster, more useful and -- better. 2. Is the industry trapped in a mire of its own making? YES, again, said Joe. "Having trouble staying afloat," he writes sardonically. The numbers game of viruses has created a mire that has ensnared vendors, users, product reviewers - but it was created by vendors. 3. Can the a-v industry handle what's ahead? "NO WAY" wrote Wells! Not unless major changes were instituted. Wells explained that about five years Central Point and Symantec kicked off a numbers game for virus detection and that it evolved into marketing claims prominently displayed on store boxes for the purpose of hyping products. The spiral went out of control with most vendors following suit even though it was known in the early part of the decade that only a small percent of known computer viruses were in the wild. Further, Wells started up the WildList to put some kind of scientific sense and systematology into computer virus incidence reporting. Wells maintains that no viruses have become common going straight from virus exchange BBSes to international threat. Further, he argued, the current institutions for tracking and solution by vendors is appropriate for the way viruses _do_ emerge in the wild. The problem arises, he continued, when vendors were and are faced with the decision of trying to cover all potential viruses - all known viruses, he calls it - from virus exchanges or Internet sites. The choice to cover all known viruses has put products into the mire. As exceptions, Wells wrote that IBM's memory resident virus filter only concentrates on common viruses and that a component of the Norton Anti-virus TSR has discarded signatures, too. Wells writes that "reviewers tend to force developers to respond by proclaiming that products that don't detect some new advanced polymorphic virus must have incompetent research departments. "Interestingly, I was recently taken aback when one reviewer told me why he includes such zoo viruses [weird examples never expected to be in the wild like Cruncher or Uruguay]. He said that this was the only way he could differentiate products. It was the only way he could rate them." One of the final notes of the paper is that product developers should "stop wasting time on this useless numbers game." Surprisingly, during the presentation Wells never really got around to covering everything in the paper. Quite a few people started asking questions about the methodology that went into WildList virus reporting. The discussion bogged down and chose to focus on the unusual: freak appearances in the wild of the Lehigh virus traced to an anonymous crazy laboring to place it on a public library PC in the Philippines every three months, like clockwork. Also on hand at the NCSA Con was the head of Microsoft's Word development arm. Presented as a member of the Anti-virus Product Developer's Consortium during the conference keynote meeting, Crypt almost laughed out loud when the Microsoft man exclaimed, "I don't know anything about computer viruses." A number of real anti-virus product developers present at the meeting seemed plainly bugged by the Microsoft employee and began questioning him in an increasingly hostile manner. Most of the queries revolved around the accusation that Microsoft was making it difficult or impossible to write disinfection routines for Word macro viruses by refusing to relinquish sufficient detail on the structure of Word documents. If the line of questioning had been allowed to proceed, the anti-virus interlocutors would have doubtless disemboweled the man from Microsoft. However, the NCSA stepped in and administered some diplomatic balm by suggesting the conversation be carried on elsewhere. In further news and idiosyncrasy, the NCSA found itself awkwardly positioned on sale of Rune Skardhamar's "Virus Detection and Elimination" book. For those who remember, "VD&E," contains computer viruses, some of which appear to have been cribbed from the casebooks of the virus-writing group, phalcon/SKISM. Convention speakers, once they noticed, found the sale of the book . . . indiscreet. Apparently, the book's title was sufficiently rational to avoid arousing suspicion and the NCSA placed it in their convention bookstore before reading closely. About a week or so after the convention, Ken Bechtel of NCSA said that the offending volume had been dropped from the organization's bookstore. THE ENDLESS RIVER OF MAIL ORDER H/P/A/C/V AND YOU Crypt Newsletter is never surprised to receive mail catalogs from eccentrics, fringe characters and victims of frank mental illness. In fact, Crypt Newsletter welcomes such trash, finding it more stimulating reading than the usual professional-looking paper from politicians, the pharaohs of industry and wealth, assorted yuppie trinket direct mail pamphleteers and Web browser demonstration diskettes and/or ad blurbs for Netcom, America On-Line and CompuServe. And so it's also diverting to see yet another enterprising bulletin board system operator devoted to "anarchy" choosing to get down to brass tacks by stuffing the sham of "Information wants to be free" and printing his own "I'm a menacing weirdo so look what I can do"-type files into hard copy for a few slices of pie at the plate of Mammon. In Hurst, Texas, the enigmatically named "The Information Center" forgoes the usual orthodoxy of the CD-ROM of superficially menacing looking shovelgoods. Instead, the new information vendors opts for self-published pamphlets and memo sheets. Crypt excerpts a handful of the more interesting cliches-as-titles: 15. FREE LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONE CALLS "Change a Radio Shack tone dialer into a [1994 Red Box] . . . " $8.00 17. MONITOR CELLULAR TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS ". . . Listening to cellular phone conversations is a lot of fun . . . You will hear people talking about sex, you will hear drug dealers making deals . . . IT IS UNLAWFUL TO MONITOR CELLULAR TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS . . . if caught . . . " $5.00 73. COKES AND CASH!! "Obtain as many [free] sodas and change as you like! FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLLY [SIC]!" $5.00 [Hammer not included.] 90. MAKE A COMPUTER DESTROYING DISK "Detailed instructions on how to make a computer destroying disk . . . Their computer will melt!" $5.00 [Optional propane torch not included.] 103. THE ASSASSIN BOX "It is made to scare or hurt your enemy by sending a shock of electricity right down his ear . . . he will get a very bad shock! Do Not Do This!" $6.00 cheap 125. CIA BRAINWASHING $7.00 The usual disclaimers concerning freedom, unusual entertainments and the unassailable verities of scientific research -- in style reminiscent of recitation in the high, piping voice of a small child -- are peppered throughout the catalog. Since 1992, Crypt has noticed a big upswing in the merchandising of what, for want of a better description, might satirically be dubbed "high school truant terrorist orthodoxy." The surge has converged precisely with pandering government oligarchs, their ambitious fluglemen in the mainstream media and concerned hand-wringers to ensure menacing-appearing, trivial anarchy files will remain a niche growth industry for the remainder of the decade. MARS ATTACKS: LIQUOR IN THE FRONT, POKER IN THE REAR OF THE FLYING SAUCER ACCORDING TO NATIONAL LABS WEAPONS GURU IN "WASHINGTON BABYLON" "The truth is out there. Trust no one." --- currently popular Friday evening bromides taken from US primetime TV In book stores now, Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein's "Washington Babylon" (Verso) is a savagely written expose of the carbuncle of naked avarice, swindle, institutionalized deceit and brain disease that is US politico-military leadership in the last decade and a half. Making a star appearance is national weapons laboratory non-lethal weapons guru John Alexander who is described as something of a demonical lunatic. Crypt Newsletter readers will remember Alexander from a February 1994 article entitled "Non-lethal Weapons: Quark, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & Charm." Excerpted from it: John Alexander's name crops up infrequently as Los Alamos National Laboratory's director of non-lethal weapons programs. In mainstream media sources like the Los Angeles Times, he has occasionally appeared delivering reasonable sounding statements about the suitability of non-lethal weaponry [glue guns, sonic bombardment designed to induce loss of bowel control and emesis, microwave brain melt, laser blinding, etc.] in international peace-keeping. However, a there is another side to Alexander which has been covered in Crypt and now in "Washington Babylon." For example, in 1980 Alexander wrote that 'there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated' [in] 'The New Mental Battlefield: Beam Me Up, Spock,' Military Review, Dec. 1980 . . . In that side-splitter, Alexander addressed out-of-body experiences, psychokinesis, and telepathic behavior modification. 'There is sufficient concern about psychic intrusion to cause work to begin on countermeasures such as bioenergy detectors,' he advised . . . 'The information presented here will be considered by some to be ridiculous since it does not conform to their view of reality, but some people still believe the world is flat.'" Alexander's background, self-described, is that of a mercenary and "thanatologist" who earned a doctorate under Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, an academic who gained a great measure of popular repute for her writings on the psychology of death. Alexander is also credited as a "Special Forces A-Team commander in Thailand . . . and a [student of] meditation in Buddhist monasteries . . ." A 1993 edition of the Albuquerque Journal credited Alexander as the organizer of a national conference in Santa Fe for "researching reports of ritual abuse, near-death experiences, human contacts with extra-terrestrial aliens and other so-called 'anomalous experiences.'" In October of the same year, Alexander popped up in an issue of the Australian new age magazine, Nexus. According to the magazine, Alexander was a captain in the infantry in 1971 and went diving in the Bimini Islands searching for the lost continent of Atlantis. "He was an official representative of the Silva mind control organization and a lecturer on protocataclysmic [?] civilization . . . [he helped] perform ESP experiments with dolphins." As s read that contains more savagely critical put-downs and character slurs than a whole year of Crypt Newsletters, "Washington Babylon" recounts all this and more including Alexander's belief -- expressed in the previous Albuquerque Journal article -- that aliens have been diddling American women. MITNICK ENACTS PLEA BARGAIN In July 1995, Crypt reported hacker Kevin Mitnick had bargained his infamous cross-country hacking and media jaunt earlier that year into a sentence that would commit him to about eight months in prison, according to John Yzurdiaga, his attorney. The legendary hacker was to plead guilty to possessing stolen cellular phone numbers, one of twenty three federal charges - all concerning cellular phone fraud - against him. The remaining charges were to be dropped. On Monday, April 22, Mitnick enacted his plea bargain, admitting to illegally possessing cellular telephone programming numbers and violating conditions of his probation. Mitnick was on probation from a hacking conviction in 1988. In return, the U.S. Attorney's office agreed to drop 22 other fraud charges against him stemming from an indictment handed down in Raleigh, N.C., in February of 1995. However, U.S. attorney David Schindler said that the dropping of the fraud charges in North Carolina did not close the case. Widely reported throughout the media, Mitnick was the target of a publicized cyber-crusade led by the Internet's well known Gangster of Love, Tsutomu Shimomura. Shimomura was on the scene when federal agents arrested Mitnick in Raleigh. Shimomura, according to media reports and his book, "Takedown" (Hyperion), had taken up the case as a matter of honor when Mitnick allegedly broke into his computer in San Diego over Christmas of 1994. On hand for the plea were Mitnick's father and grandmother, as well as two cousins, according to the Los Angeles Times. "He did a crime. He did his time," said Reba Vartanian, Mitnick's grandmother. This in reference to the one year Mitnick has already spent under arrest while awaiting case resolution and sentencing. Mitnick remains in jail at the Los Angeles federal Metropolitan Detention Center. THE LETTERS PAGE: CRYPT READER WALKS THE LINE SOMEWHERE DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS Crypt: Good to see your bird's eye view of reality hasn't yet been clouded by advanced age or anything else to which one's bird's eye view of reality too often succumbs. Quasi-amusingly, in the last month or so we here deep-inna-hart-a Texas have been quite troubled by both Natas and Monkey viruses. It seems that Monkey is coming from the local technical college -- which in completely irrelevant news, is closely associated with Chrysler Technologies which itself is the aircraft maint'nence depot of for the Sultanate of Brunei. Natas virus is coming from the local junior college. However, the big university is squeaky clean because Jayzuss died onna crawss so that the faculty and students alike could be pompous and wealthy. They, of course, could never be bothered by mere viruses, binary or otherwise. Unfortunately, they haven't the slightest concept of data security, either. Paradoxically, out of this grows my latest and much-needed employment campaign. I've been listening to Johnny Cash far, far too much lately. Cory in Waco, Texas [Crypt replies: Proximity to Baylor is making you crabby. We recommend wearing a Faraday cage on your head while going virus punching until you become fully acclimated to the vibes of Baylor brethren.] ANKLE-BITER #3,421 ================== Dear Crypt: Can you send something on virus creation and hex editing? I am too lazy to read books. The Goof, somewhere in Malaysia [Try GAO Hacker Information Source at 1-202-512-6240.] EN PASSANT ========== Crypt: Pas de questions . . . juste pour dire un ptit bonjour en passant . . . Pierre Gladu CEASE LEFT WING RANTING ======================= ["GAO report on hackers breaks wind" was also published in Computer underground Digest. The following came to Crypt in response to it.] Response to CUD #8.48: GAO hacker report: selling wind You recently quoted something called the "Crypt Newsletter" on the subject of computer-related yellow journalism & governmental scare-mongering on the threat to national security from "hackers". While I certainly am concerned about the characterization of "hackers" as the lepers of the 1990s, I am very disappointed that CUD would publish such a blatantly partisan, left-wing rant, as news. Do you intend CUD to become a forum for left-wing demagogues? I should hope that you will continue to provide a balanced forum for discussing issues of interest to all of us in the Net community, and that you will in future at least insert a disclaimer before reprinting material of such material. Otherwise, CUD will cease to be a forum for intramural discussion of serious issues, and instead become merely a mirror of the moderators' apparently left-wing political views. What a shame, indeed. I am a conservative, and I would like to point out to your readership that it is a left-wing, liberal Democratic Administration which has foisted the entire Clipper/Capstone/EES thing on us, and which has consistently violated the rights of individuals and groups in their quest to establish the Nanny State (Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc.). In fact, Republicans in the House & Senate have been vociferous in both opposing EES and in watering down the more heinous provisions of Mr. Clinton's so-called "anti-terrorism" legislation. The very sinister Filegate incident, which is far beyond any "enemies list" kept by the Nixon Administration, clearly shows the arrogance of liberals who think that government (i.e., themselves) always know best, and that their good intentions render them above the law. Remember, Chuck Colson went to jail for possessing one (1) FBI "raw" file; the Clinton White House had at least 408! >No one except an obscure lunatic named T. K. Jones in the Reagan >administration really thought that either U.S. generals or their Soviet >counterparts would call down the wrath of 10,000 nuclear warheads. Whoever wrote this must be either extremely stupid or willfully ignorant. Weapons are made to be used, and the strategic arsenals of both the U.S. & the U.S.S.R./Russia, while serving as a deterrent against a general conventional war, are indeed capable of being launched if National Command Authority so decides. All one has to do is look at the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Soviet's panicky launching of Project RYAN during the 1980s to see that there was (and still is, in my opinion) a real danger of unleashing Armageddon. That's why SDI was, and continues to be, as issue of vital import. In closing, I would like to compliment CUD for providing a (generally) balanced and informative resource on public policy issues such as Internet regulation. While it is very easy to criticize from the peanut gallery, I hope that my comments and suggestions are received not as churlish sniping, but as advice from a devoted reader who only wishes to assist in making CUD that much more appealing to us all. Roland Dobbins, Bell Atlantic Network Integration Consulting Services Group -=The Crypt Newsletter welcomes thoughtful mail from readers at crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu. Published letters may be edited for length and clarity or anonymized to protect the naive from themselves.=- REACHING CRYPT NEWSLETTER Send software, books, subscription orders ($10.00/year) to: George Smith Crypt Newsletter 1635 Wagner St. Pasadena, CA 91106 E-mail: crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu or 70743.1711@compuserve.com CRYPT NEWSLETTER HYPERTEXT If you're reading this, you don't have it. Crypt Hypertext can be registered through Compuserve's on-line SWREG service. To purchase a copy of Crypt Hypertext through your CompuServe account simply use the GO menu and enter the keyword: SWREG. You will be presented with a menu to identify your geographic location. When prompted to search the software database enter the number: # 9228 or the name CRYPT NEWSLETTER HYPERTEXT V. 1.0 and provide the requested information. You will receive a copy of Crypt Hypertext through US Mail. Operating Systems - DOS, WINDOWS Cost: $30.00 + $4.00 shipping and handling in US, Canada and Mexico. + $8.00 shipping and handling worldwide. The database contains not only Crypt Newsletter 1992 - 95 but also a great deal of additional material and unpublished notes. Where appropriate, additions have also been made to old issues and articles to provide current perspective and background. The database also contains a keyworded glossary and extensive subject index spanning the length and breadth of the newsletter. Cut and paste any information to your customized specification. In the database you'll find comprehensive stories, tutorials and news on: --the computer virus underground and virus-writers --the anti-virus industry --on-line culture and sociology --book reviews of current titles in security --annals of computer crime & computer virus spread --virus descriptions and history --walkthrough simulations, imagery and displays - aural and visual - from computer viruses and controversial virus-making software toolkits --discussion of legal issues with regard to computer viruses and related computer crime --extensive companion material for the author's book, "The Virus Creation Labs" --review of the mainstream media: the shams and scams reported as real news. Take a skeptic's look at the information highway! The Crypt Newsletter database is also extensible. Future hypertext issues, distributed through CIS forums, can easily be copied to the database's directory on your home computer and seamlessly integrated into the collection. The complete index of topics 1992 - 96 is on the Crypt News Web page: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt CRYPT HYPERTEXT ORDER FORM --------------------------------------------------------- By Mail: Return this form along with your remittance to: COMSEC Ltd. 1545 Waukegan Road Suite 2 Glenview, Illinois 60025-2143 Orders: 800-754-8214 Support: 847-729-3565 Fax: 847-729-3575 Questions To: crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu 70743.1711@compuserve.com ORDER: [ ] ____ Crypt Hypertext(s) @ $30.00 each. [ ] Regular mail shipping, please add $4.00. [ ] US Priority Mail, please add $6.00. Checks and money orders must be in U.S. dollars drawn on a U.S. bank. Do Not Enclose Cash. Total enclosed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $______________ Payment by: [] Check [] Money Order SHIP TO: Name _____________________________________________________ Address 1 ________________________________________________ Address 2 ________________________________________________ City __________________________ State/Province ___________ Zip/Postal Code ________________ Country _________________ Telephone (______)________________________________________ CRYPT ON COMPUSERVE Crypt Newsletter is now concentrated in two places on Compuserve. GO INVIRCIBLE brings the user to dedicated Crypt Newsletter message and file bases. For example, in addition to the usual issues Crypt maintains copies of electronic documents like the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy & Government Bulletin and the recent GAO report on hacking incidents at Department of Defense. GO NCSAFORUM will bring users into the National Computer Security Association Infosec forum. This forum features a great deal of specific and general information on computer security as well as Crypt Newsletter in its attached file libraries and message bases. CRYPT NEWSLETTER WORLD WIDE WEB HOME PAGE You can visit Crypt & The Virus Creation Labs on the World Wide Web, download back issues and sample a chapter from VCL! Set your browser to: URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt ---------------------------------------------------------------- If you quite enjoy the Crypt Newsletter, editor George Smith's book, The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey Into the Underground," will really flip your wig. In it Smith unravels the intrigue behind virus writers and their scourges, the anti-virus software developers and security consultants on the information highway. What people are saying about THE VIRUS CREATION LABS: "I couldn't stop reading it . . . As hype continues to build about security on the Internet and movies like _Hackers_ ooze the real hackers into the mainstream arena, this book is definite apropos material for the time. Read it! A+" ---The Net magazine, February 1996 "[VIRUS CREATION LABS] is informative and stunningly incisive . . . " ---Secure Computing, October 1995 "George Smith . . . takes a look at the world of virus writers and anti-virus software vendors in a style similar to that of 'Cyberpunks' -- anecdotal, humorous and revealing . . . a lucid and entertaining read." ---Computer Security Journal "There are relatively few books on the 'computer underground' that provide richly descriptive commentary and analysis of personalities and culture that simultaneously grab the reader with entertaining prose. Among the classics are Cliff Stoll's 'The Cuckoo's Egg,' Katie Hafner and John Markoff's 'Cyberpunk,' and Bruce Sterling's 'The Hacker Crackdown.' Add George Smith's 'The Virus Creation Labs' to the list . . . 'Virus Creation Labs' is about viruses as M*A*S*H is about war!" ---Jim Thomas, Computer underground Digest 7.18, March 5, 1995 "THE VIRUS CREATION LABS dives into the hoopla of the Michelangelo media blitz and moves on to become an engaging, articulate, wildly angry diatribe on the world of computer virus writers . . . Expert reporting." ----McClatchy NewsWire -------------------------order form------------------------- Yes, I want my wig flipped and wish to receive a copy of George Smith's "The Virus Creation Labs: A Journey Into the Underground" (American Eagle, ISBN 0-929408-09-8). Price: $12.95/copy plus $2.50 shipping per book (add $7.50 overseas) NAME: _____________________________________________ ADDRESS: __________________________________________ CITY/STATE/ZIP: __________________________________ Payment method: ___ Master Charge ___ Money Order ___ Check ___ Visa Credit Card # ___________________________________________ Expiration date _________________________________________ Name: ____________________________ Orders can be taken by voice or fax through regular phone number and/or 1-800 number in USA. COD welcome. American Eagle: 1-800-719-4957 1-520-367-1621 POB 1507 Show Low, AZ 85901 Acknowledgments: This issue Crypt is indebted to the NCSA for hosting the interesting and informative Virus Prevention Con '96. Crypt also gives a hearty thanks and tip o' the hat to Glenn Jordan and S&S International's representatives for hours of avuncular discussion and a tasty meal in Alexandria, Virginia. ------------------------------------------------------------- George Smith, Ph.D., edits the Crypt Newsletter from Pasadena, CA. Media critic Andy Lopez lives in Columbia, SC. copyright 1996 Crypt Newsletter. All rights reserved.