CRYPT NEWSLETTER 38

July-August 1996



Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.)

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Ŀ

 Contents: Crypt Newsletter #38      





 THIS ISSUE

NEWS

The Info-Warriors: Richard Pryce and Mathew Bevan's excellent adventure

John Alexander watch: Poker in the rear of the flying saucer, Part II

Computer virus book to sell for $395.00

The Kaiser of Microsoft speaks from an aircraft carrier

SOFTWARE

Some not so obvious DOS business in Windows95

MISCELLANY

  Letters page

  Crypt Newsletter Hypertext

  Crypt Masthead Info

  Credits/Acknowledgment





THE INFO-WARRIORS: BRITISH HACKERS BECOME POSTER BOYS FOR U.S.

GOVERNMENT AGENTS PARANOID ABOUT FOREIGN CONSPIRACIES



Electronic doom will soon be visited on U.S. computer networks by

information warriors, hackers, pannational groups of computer-wielding

religious extremists, possible agents of Libya and Iran, international 

thugs and money-mad Internet savvy thieves.



John Deutch, director of Central Intelligence, testified to the

truth of the matter, so it must be graven in stone. In a long statement

composed in the august tone of the Cold Warrior, Deutch said to the

Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on June 25, "My greatest

concern is that hackers, terrorist organizations, or other nations might

use information warfare techniques" to disrupt the national

infrastructure.



"Virtually any 'bad actor' can acquire the hardware and software

needed to attack some of our critical information-based infrastructures.

Hacker tools are readily available on the Internet, and hackers

themselves are a source of expertise for any nation or foreign

terrorist organization that is interested in developing an information

warfare capability. In fact, hackers, with or without their full

knowledge, may be supplying advice and expertise to rogue states such

as Iran and Libya."



In one sentence, the head of the CIA cast hackers -- from those more

expert than Kevin Mitnick to AOLHell-wielding idiots calling an America

On-Line overseas account -- as pawns of perennial international bogeymen,

Libya and Iran.



Scrutiny of the evidence that led to this conclusion was not possible 

since it was classified, according to Deutch.



" . . . we have [classified] evidence that a number of countries

around the world are developing the doctrine, strategies, and tools

to conduct information attacks," said Deutch.



Catching glimpses of shadowy enemies at every turn, Deutch

characterized them as operating from the deep cover of classified

programs in pariah states.  Truck bombs aimed at the telephone

company, electronic assaults by "paid hackers" are likely to

be part of the arsenal of anyone from the Lebanese Hezbollah

to "nameless . . . cells of international terrorists such as those

who attacked the World Trade Center."



Quite interestingly, a Minority Staff Report entitled "Security and

Cyberspace" and presented to the subcommittee around the same time as

Deutch's statement, presented a different picture.  In its attempt to

raise the alarm over hacker assaults on the U.S., it inadvertently

portrayed the intelligence community responsible for appraising the

threat as hidebound stumblebums, Cold Warriors resistant to change and

ignorant or indifferent to the technology of computer networks and their

misuse.



Written by Congressional staff investigators Dan Gelber and Jim Christy, 

the report quotes an unnamed member of the intelligence  community likening 

threat assessment in the area to "a toddler soccer game, where everyone 

just runs around trying to kick the ball somewhere."  Further, assessment 

of the threat posed by information warriors was "not presently a priority 

of our nation's intelligence and enforcement communities."



The report becomes more comical with briefings from intelligence

agencies said to be claiming that the threat of hackers and information

warfare is "substantial" but completely unable to provide a concrete

assessment of the threat because few or no personnel were working on

the subject under investigation. "One agency assembled [ten] individuals

for the Staff briefing, but ultimately admitted that only one person was

actually working 'full time' on intelligence collection and threat

analysis," write Gelber and Christy.



The CIA is one example.



"Central Intelligence Agency . . . staffs an 'Information Warfare

Center'; however, at the time of [the] briefing, barely a handful

of persons were dedicated to collection and on [sic] defensive

information warfare," comment the authors.



" . . . at no time was any agency able to present a national threat

assessment of the risk posed to our information infrastructure," they

continue. Briefings on the subject, if any and at any level of

classification, "consisted of extremely limited anecdotal information."



Oh no, John, say it ain't so!



The minority report continues to paint a picture of intelligence agencies

that have glommed onto the magic words "information warfare" and

"hackers" as mystical totems, grafting the subjects onto "pre-existing"

offices or new "working groups." However, the operations are based only

on labels. "Very little prioritization" has been done, there are

few analysts working on the subjects in question.



Another "very senior intelligence officer for science and technology"

is quoted claiming "it will probably take the intelligence community

years to break the traditional paradigms, and re-focus resources"

in the area.



Restated, intelligence director Deutch pronounced in June there was 

classified evidence that hackers are in league with Libya and Iran and 

that countries around the world are plotting plots to attack the U.S. 

through information warfare.  But the classified data is and was, at best, 

anecdotal gossip -- hearsay, bullshit -- assembled by perhaps a handful of 

individuals working haphazardly inside the labyrinth of the intelligence 

community. There is no real threat assessment to back up the Deutch 

claims.  Can anyone say _bomber gap_?



The lack of solid evidence for any of the claims made by the intelligence

community has created an unusual stage on which two British hackers,

Datastream Cowboy and Kuji, were made the dog and pony in a ridiculous

show to demonstrate the threat of information warfare to members of

Congress.  Because of a break-in at an Air Force facility in Rome, NY,

in 1994, both hackers were made the stars of two Government Accounting

Office reports on network intrusions in the Department of Defense earlier

this year.  The comings and goings of Datastream Cowboy also constitute the

meat of Gelber and Christy's minority staff report from the Subcommittee on

Investigations.



Before delving into it in detail, it's interesting to read what a

British newspaper published about Datastream Cowboy, a sixteen year-old,

about a year before he was made the poster boy for information

warfare and international hacking conspiracies in front of Congress.



In a brief article, blessedly so in contrast to the reams of propaganda

published on the incident for Congress, the July 5 1995 edition of The

Independent wrote, "[Datastream Cowboy] appeared before Bow Street

magistrates yesterday charged with unlawfully gaining access to a series

of American defense computers. Richard Pryce, who was 16 at the time of

the alleged offences, is accused of accessing key US Air Force systems

and a network owned by Lockheed, the missile and aircraft manufacturers."



Pryce, a resident of a northwest suburb of London did not enter a plea

on any of 12 charges levied against him under the British

Computer Misuse Act.  He was arrested on May 12, 1994, by New Scotland

Yard as a result of work by the U.S. Air Force Office of Special

Investigations.  The Times of London reported when police came for

Pryce, they found him at his PC on the third floor of his family's house.

Knowing he was about to be arrested, he "curled up on the floor and cried."



In Gelber and Christy's staff report, the tracking of Pryce, and to a

lesser extent a collaborator called Kuji -- real name Mathew Bevan, is

retold as an eight page appendix entitled "The Case Study: Rome

Laboratory, Griffiss Air Force Base, NY Intrusion."



Pryce's entry into Air Force computers was noticed on March 28, 1994,

when personnel discovered a sniffer program he had installed on one

of the Air Force systems in Rome.  The Defense Information System

Agency (DISA) was notified.  DISA subsequently called the Air

Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) at the Air Force

Information Warfare Center in San Antonio, Texas. AFOSI then

sent a team to Rome to appraise the break-in, secure the system and

trace those responsible.  During the process, the AFOSI team discovered

Datastream Cowboy had entered the Rome Air Force computers for the

first time on March 25, according to the report.  Passwords had been

compromised, electronic mail read and deleted and unclassified

"battlefield simulation" data copied off the facility. The

Rome network was also used as a staging area for penetration of other

systems on the Internet.



AFOSI investigators initially traced the break-in back one step to

the New York City provider, Mindvox. According to the Congressional

report, this put the NYC provider under suspicion because "newspaper

articles" said Mindvox's computer security was furnished by two "former

Legion of Doom members." "The Legion of Doom is a loose-knit computer

hacker group which had several members convicted for intrusions into

corporate telephone switches in 1990 and 1991," wrote Gelber and Christy.



AFOSI then got permission to begin monitoring -- the equivalent of

wiretapping -- all communications on the Air Force network.  Limited

observation of other Internet providers being used during the break-in

was conducted from the Rome facilities.  Monitoring told the investigators

the handles of hackers involved in the Rome break-in were Datastream

Cowboy and Kuji.



Since the monitoring was of limited value in determining the whereabouts

of Datastream Cowboy and Kuji, AFOSI resorted to "their human intelligence

network of informants, i.e., stool pigeons, that 'surf the Internet.'

Gossip from one AFOSI 'Net stoolie uncovered that Datastream Cowboy was from

Britain. The anonymous source said he had e-mail correspondence with Datastream

Cowboy in which the hacker said he was a 16-year old living in

England who enjoyed penetrating ".MIL" systems. Datastream Cowboy also

apparently ran a bulletin board system and gave the telephone number to the

AFOSI source.



The Air Force team contacted New Scotland Yard and the British law

enforcement agency identified the residence, the home of Richard

Pryce, which corresponded to Datastream Cowboy's system phone number.

English authorities began observing Pryce's phone calls and noticed

he was making fraudulent use of British Telecom.  In addition,

whenever intrusions at the Air Force network in Rome occurred, Pryce's

number was seen to be making illegal calls out of Britain.



Pryce travelled everywhere on the Internet, going through South America,

multiple countries in Europe and Mexico, occasionally entering the Rome

network.  From Air Force computers, he would enter systems at Jet

Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the Goddard Space

Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Since Pryce was capturing the logins

and passwords of the Air Force networks in Rome, he was then able to

get into the home systems of Rome network users, defense contractors

like Lockheed.



By mid-April of 1994 the Air Force was monitoring other systems being

used by the British hackers. On the 14th of the month, Kuji logged on

to the Goddard Space Center from a system in Latvia and copied data

from it to the Baltic country.  According to Gelber's report, the

AFOSI investigators assumed the worst, that it was a sign that someone

in an eastern European country was making a grab for sensitive

information.  They broke the connection but not before Kuji had

copied files off the Goddard system.  As it turned out, the Latvian

computer was just another system the British hackers were using as

a stepping stone; Pryce had also used it to cover his tracks when

penetrating networks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, via

an intermediate system in Seattle, cyberspace.com.



The next day, Kuji was again observed trying to probe various

systems at NATO in Brussels and The Hague as well as Wright-Patterson.

On the 19th, Pryce successfully returned to NATO systems in The

Hague through Mindvox.  The point Gelber and Christy seem to be trying

to make is that Kuji, a 21-year old, was coaching Pryce during some

of his attacks on various systems.



By this point, New Scotland Yard had a search warrant for Pryce

with the plan being to swoop down on him the next time he accessed

the Air Force network in Rome.



In April, Pryce penetrated a system on the Korean peninsula and copied

material off a facility called the Korean Atomic Research Institute

to an Air Force computer in Rome. At the time, the investigators had

no idea whether the system was in North or South Korea.  The impression

created is one of hysteria and confusion at Rome. There was fear that the

system, if in North Korea, would trigger an international incident, with

the hack interpreted as an "aggressive act of war." The system turned

out to be in South Korea.



During the Korean break-in, New Scotland Yard could have intervened and

arrested Pryce.  However, for unknown reasons, the agency did not.  Those

with good memories may recall mainstream news reports concerning Pryce's

hack, which was cast as an entry into sensitive North Korean networks.



It's worth noting that while the story was portrayed as the work of

an anonymous hacker, both the U.S. government and New Scotland Yard knew

who the perpetrator was.  Further, according to Gelber's report English

authorities already had a search warrant for Pryce's house.



Finally, on May 12 British authorities pounced.  Pryce was arrested

and his residence searched.  He crumbled, according to the Times of

London, and began to cry.  Gelber and Christy write that Pryce promptly

admitted to the Air Force break-ins as well as others.  Pryce

confessed he had copied a large program that used artificial intelligence

to construct theoretical Air Orders of Battle from an Air Force computer

to Mindvox and left it there because of its great size, 3-4 megabytes.

Pryce paid for his Internet service with a fraudulent credit card number.

At the time, the investigators were unable to find out the name and

whereabouts of Kuji. A lead to an Australian underground bulletin board

system failed to pan out.



On June 23 of this year, Reuters reported that Kuji -- 21-year-old Mathew

Bevan -- a computer technician, had been arrested and charged in

connection with the 1994 Air Force break-ins in Rome.



Rocker Tom Petty sang that even the losers get lucky some time.  He

wasn't thinking of British computer hackers but no better words could be

used to describe the two Englishmen and a two year old chain of events that

led to fame as international computer terrorists in front of Congress

at the beginning of the summer of 1996.



Lacking much evidence for the case of conspiratorial computer-waged

campaigns of terror and chaos against the U.S., the makers of Congressional

reports resorted to telling the same story over and over, three

times in the space of the hearings on the subject. One envisions U.S.

Congressmen too stupid or apathetic to complain, "Hey, didn't we get that

yesterday, and the day before?" Pryce and Bevan appeared in "Security in

Cyberspace" and twice in Government Accounting Office reports AIMD-96-84

and T-AIMD96-92. Jim Christy, the co-author of "Security in Cyberspace"

and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations' source for the Pryce

case supplied the same tale for Jack Brock, author of the GAO reports.

Brock writes, ". . . Air Force officials told us that at least one of

the hackers may have been working for a foreign country interested in

obtaining military research data or areas in which the Air Force was

conducting advanced research."  It was, apparently, more wishful

thinking.





Notes:



1. The Federation of American Scientists has made available on its

Web site electronic copies of all the reports mentioned previously.

The URL is http://www.fas.org/ .



The FAS Web site also features an easy to use search engine which can

be used to pull up the Congressional testimony on hackers and

network intrusion.  These example key words are effective: "Jim

Christy," "Datastream Cowboy".





LIQUOR IN THE FRONT, POKER IN THE REAR OF THE FLYING SAUCER, II:

CRYPT NEWSLETTER'S JOHN ALEXANDER WATCH CONTINUES







"The truth is out there.  Trust no one."



                      --- currently popular Friday evening

                      bromides taken from US primetime TV





Crypt Newsletter's John Alexander watch continues in this issue

with a surprising appearance in a new book entitled "Tomorrow's

War" (Harcourt, Brace) by British reporter David Shukman.



Faithful readers know Alexander as a former Los Alamos National Lab's

non-lethal weapons guru with completely freaked out beliefs in

the paranormal, most recently profiled in Alexander Cockburn's

"Washington  Babylon." In the latter book, Alexander is said to be

convinced aliens are fooling with our women.



Alexander's name crops up infrequently in news articles on super

weapons of fabulous nature:  glue guns presumably similar to the

one used by the Marvel Comics villain Paste-Pot Pete in the

mid-Seventies, sonic mortars designed to induce loss of bowel

control and emesis, microwave brain melters.



One of his most famous quotes, from a 1980 paper in Military

Review dealt with telekinesis as a tool of war: "There is

sufficient concern about psychic intrusion to cause work to

begin on countermeasures such as bioenergy detectors . . . 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."



In "Tomorrow's War," reporter Shukman spends a chapter concentrating

on the mostly invisible means of non-lethal war.  As part of his

research, he requested an interview with Alexander.  A Los Alamos

National Lab public relations hack balefully warns Shukman not to

bait Alexander with questions about actual weapons systems or the

guru of non-lethality will shut up like a clam.  During the interview,

Shukman is taken by how Alexander's eyes seem to bug out of his

head when he is speaking about death and US policy on non-lethal

weapons. In the book, Shukman claims Alexander says that killing the

citizenry of an enemy nation tends to alienate those we wish

to conquer because death, and here is the best part, is usually

seen as an irreversible condition.  Hence the need for non-lethal

weapons.



Although Alexander no longer appears to enjoy a position at Los

Alamos as a policy maker, Shukman's book was completed in 1994 before

the guru of non-lethality ended his association with the national

lab.



Also appearing in the book are science-fiction authors Janet and

Chris Morris.  Also deeply interested in non-lethal weaponry, they

tend to appear in articles and books that cite Alexander, too.

The Morrises are said to have traveled to Russia around 1991

and observed a secret brainwashing device manufactured by

Soviet Cold War science.  Although Shukman writes that it looked

legitimate, a careful reading by Crypt Newsletter left the

conclusion that it did not work at all.



In "Tomorrow's War," Shukman relates how in 1993, he reported a

lengthy piece for the BBC focusing on John Alexander, Janet Morris

and their interest in the development of non-lethal weaponry for

the US military. He adds Janet Morris used the BBC video segment to

peddle influence and curry interest in military and government circles.



Shukman also alleges the US military is poking around with the

development of, for want of a better name, a "fart bomb" that

emits a gas capable of stalling motor vehicles.  So named the "fart

bomb" because of its odor, Shukman writes he witnessed a test

in which personnel opened the hood of a running vehicle and sprayed

a compound into the air filter.  The vehicle then stalled.

This proves that "fart bombs" can be deployed an enemy nation

highways to halt traffic insists the scientist trying to develop

them.



Information warfare is also addressed.  Military hackers could

be employed to bring down the computer networks of enemy nations.

The chupacabras of cyberspace, "HERF" weapons that squirt

microwave radiation at computers thus fritzing circuitry and

shriveling data, are invoked. As a by-product, they can also be

turned on civilians. Command-activated computer viruses are being

developed to go on the offensive like obedient cyber-zombie warriors

in time of need.  No evidence of any of this is presented. It is said

to be purely the domain of the superscientists of the US military

industrial complex.



Alternatively, the aura of secrecy which surrounds reporting on

the topic could be seen as a mechanism designed to protect various

arms of the US military involved in researching it from a public

horsewhipping if the news became known to sufficiently large

numbers of common sense Americans.





More Alexander: A splendid sci-fi character

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



Crypt Newsletter reader Cory Tucker alertly intercepted our John

Alexander watch alert on the Usenet and supplemented the news

stream this issue with an extract from the electronic magazine,

Mindnet Journal.



In a June 1996 article from the magazine, reporter Armen Victorian

quotes Alexander in a 1990 paper presented to the "Forum for

Military Applications of Directed Energy (F-MADE)" at Kirtland

Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.



The quote is reproduced:



"I submit that we will have to abandon the border-based concept

of 'Fortress America' and recognise that our national interests

may be endangered from within."



This is connected with some standard Alexander pronouncements on

the establishment of new values of conflict and the coercion

of enemies by means of the usual canisters of non-lethal

phlogiston.



One can subscribe to the Mindnet Journal thusly,



Send message: [subscribe mindnet] to: <Majordomo@c2.org>.



However, one of the most damning articles on Alexander was one

entitled "The Soft Kill Fallacy" that appeared in a 1994 edition

of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Written by Secrecy & Government

Bulletin editor Steven Aftergood, it reported puckishly, "John Alexander

is by all accounts a resourceful and imaginative individual. He would

make a splendid character in a science fiction novel. But he probably

shouldn't be spending taxpayer money without adult supervision."



But according to Aftergood, Alexander is now a private citizen

and no longer associated with Los Alamos, voiding the issue.

In a recent telephone interview Aftergood reflected that although he

hoped it was not the case it was quite likely that controversy arising

from the 1994 TBATS news piece had resulted in Alexander . . . moving

on from the national weapons lab.  Pesky questions arising from a

history laced with talk about mind control, talking to dolphins and

diving for the lost continent of Atlantis are too be avoided in

weapons lab employment.



More recently, Alexander appeared in the March 1996 issue of National

Defense, a military industry business and technology journal published

in Arlington, Virginia.  In "Non-lethal weapons demand expands as

missions change," Alexander reveals very little but admits that

there are "severe limitations" on the capabilities of current systems.

Some of these are the "sticky foams"  developed by Sandia National

Laboratory and "deployable nets" made for Advanced Research Projects

Agency by a company called Foster-Miller. ". . . there is very limited

confidence the weapons will do the job required," Alexander writes.



Alexander, seemingly glum over the future of non-lethal weaponry,

now invokes information warfare as a necessary part of the action.

It is, he says, "an independent but complimentary form" of

non-lethal conflict. No specifics are given. Since it is completely

unnecessary to have any idea what "information warfare" is within

the context of the bureaucratized, institutionalized readership at

which his article is aimed, it is enough that the magical buzzterm be

presented.







A search for brainwashing devices

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



Wherever one finds evidence of the John Alexander legend, Janet Morris

the grand dame of non-lethal weapons is always close by.



For instance, also panned from the World Wide Web, this description of

Janet Morris jumped out of a June 1993 issue of the British magazine,

Lobster:



"Janet Morris . . . is best known as a science fiction writer but has

been a member of the New York Academy of Sciences since 1980 . . ."



Crypt Newsletter readers should note anyone, even you, can be a member

of the New York Academy of Sciences as long as you subscribe to the

organization's publishing organ, The Sciences.



Lobster continues, "She worked on a research project investigating

the effects of mind on probability in computer systems . . . In a

recent telephone conversation with [the reporter], Janet Morris confirmed

John Alexander's involvement in mind control and psychotronic projects

in the Los Alamos National Laboratories. Alexander and his team have

recently been working with Dr. 'Igor Smirnov', a psychologist from the

Moscow Institute of Psychocorrelations. They were invited to the U.S.

after Janet Morris' visit to Russia in 1991. There she was shown the

technique which was pioneered by the Russian Department of

Psycho-Correction at Moscow Medical Academy. The Russians

employ a technique to electronically analyse the human mind in order to

influence it. They input subliminal command messages, using key words

transmitted in 'white noise' or music. Using an infrasound very low

frequency-type transmission, the acoustic psycho-correction message is

transmitted via bone conduction . . . "



In essence, this is a description of the same brainwashing device

cited in "Tomorrow's War" by reporter Shukman. Incidentally, Crypt

Newsletter also found this excerpt in a larger article attributed to

Nexus, an Australian New Age magazine (see below).



Lobster, in more information culled from the World Wide Web, is an

unusual political journal from Britain.  Founded in 1983 by Stephen

Dorril and Robin Ramsay, it covers spying and secrecy issues

in Britain and the U.S.





Janet Morris: Environmentally friendly information warfare

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



In a 1995 paper published by the US Air Force, Janet Morris and colleagues

signal they, like John Alexander, have hitched their dray to information

warfare as well as non-lethality.  "Antilethal" weaponry is also added

to the stew.



In an article entitled "Weapons of Mass Protection: Nonlethality,

Information Warfare, and Airpower in the age of Chaos" for an

edition of AirPower Journal, Janet and Chris Morris insist

conventional air power -- the dropping of iron bombs on the

unpopular -- is no longer the correct tool for suppressing the future

equivalents of "Serbian warplanes pounding Bosnian religious sites or

a resurgence of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi adventurism, Somalian warlords

firing on United Nations peacekeepers, or Rwandan refugees streaming

across uncontrollable borders . . ."



Instead, a cocktail of non-lethal and antilethal weapons plus

information warfare is the answer, "delivering results that are life

conserving, environmentally friendly, and fiscally responsible."



Unfortunately, very little of the paper is actually devoted to

explaining precisely what constitutes information warfare and

"antilethal" weaponry.  Instead, the authors concentrate on educating

the reader about the evolution of warmaking theory from Sun Tzu to

Machiavelli to Karl von Clausewitz with a little philosophy from

John Locke thrown in on the side. The only missing element is

citation of the Schlieffen plan but this is more than made up for

by the proclamation that it is now "the age of chaos" and

pungent usage of the terms "paradigm" and "international rule of

law."



Since it is "the age of chaos," the current time of combat must

be reclassified as "The Era of Wars of Divestiture." A war of

divestiture, write the Morrises, is a war in which we, along with

the military of the United States, "divest" the enemy of his ability

to wage war and mess up the international rule of law.  In wars

of this nature, the US military then protects the "innocents" and

preserves "the environment from destruction . . ." caused by enemies

who start wars that blow up the countryside and people.



To do this, the threshold of war must be lowered so that non-lethal

and "antilethal" weapons, as well as information war, can be unleashed

on the enemy before the environment is despoiled.



"But what is non-lethality?" you ask.  The Morrises have it covered.

"Nonlethality categorizes nonlethal weapons as . . . nonlethal and

antilethal."  Clear?



Anyway, the non-lethal technologies are ones the Crypt Newsletter

reader has heard much of already.



They are "acoustic," "high-power microwave" (the HERF gun); "non-nuclear

electromagnetic pulse" (HERF gun again); "obscurants" (smoke shells);

"glues and slicks";  "supercaustics" (new word for acids and bases);

"magnetohydrodynamics" (Crypt has no idea but neither does anyone else,

really); "information warfare" (more HERF guns, computer viruses,

hackers); and "soldier protection" (bullet proof armor and helmets)."



Antilethal technologies are slightly different.  These include any

weapon that can kill the enemy but are mostly meant only to destroy

equipment or kill smaller numbers of civilians than usual.

That's right! It's another name for a "smart bomb."



The Morrises warn that it is time to act now on information

warfare because "rogue states" and "subnational and pannational

groups of religious fundamentalists" will not be deterred from using

its tactics against us.  It is the property of computer hackers"

and, "Its weapons are available worldwide."



"Its  systems can be cobbled together from electronics stores on the

streets of any city in the world or can be ordered by mail."



Par for articles of this nature: Zero examples are given,

no references on the matter cited.  Crypt Newsletter will fill in

the blanks for the reader and assume the Morrises are somewhat familiar

with things like the Virus Creation Laboratory toolkit or CD-ROMs of

computer viruses and hacker software and that this is what they're

aiming at when they mention the easy availability of information warfare

technology.  Crypt will add they _probably_ mean the kinds of hackers

like Datastream Cowboy who broke into the Air Force Material Command

in Rome, NY, but was arrested anyway and curled up in a ball and cried

when New Scotland Yard came to take him away.



Attached to the end of the article is a disclaimer:



"The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document

are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,

academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the

official position of the US Government, Department of Defense, the

United States Air Force or the Air University."



Therefore, one assumes the article could mean something if the

President or a general thinks it is cool, or nothing at all if

it ever proves to be a source of embarrassment.





Still more UFOs, brainwashing by microwave and Alexander the PENGUIN

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



Whenever bumping into the reputations of John Alexander and the weirdo

aspects of "non-lethal" weapons, one must also be aware of their proximity

to the gray area of the paranormal.



For example, from the Australian magazine, Nexus, attributed to Armen

Victorian, apparently the same reporter from the Mindnet Journal,

retrieved from the Web and Usenet:



"[Alexander is] on the board of a 'remote viewing' company called

PSI-TECH . . .



"PSI-TECH has received several government contracts. For example,

during the Gulf War crisis the Department of Defense asked it to use

remote viewing to locate Saddam's Scud missiles sites."



[For those unfamiliar with the term "remote viewing," Crypt Newsletter

supplies a glossary definition, below].



The article goes on to confusingly link Alexander to a "UFO working

group" in the Defense Intelligence Agency and a very perplexing plot

to disseminate disinformation about UFO's.  In this plot Alexander

has a secret codename: PENGUIN.



The Federation of American Scientists' Steven Aftergood added his

last sighting of Alexander came from a UFO magazine that spotted

the guru of non-lethality near Las Vegas making preparations for

the inevitable and final arrival of aliens from outer space.



So much of this flyblown information is in circulation that a paranoid

might think it part of a black project cover operation designed to

deliberately spread confusion and ludicrous hearsay on the subject.



Indeed, a quick survey of Usenet messages show literally more than a

hundred recent posts devoted to John Alexander: Alexander

and psycho-electronic mind bending; Alexander and acoustic bullets;

Alexander as part of a cabal of spies; Alexander and machines

which are said to cause loss of friction in the bowels; Alexander and

top secret projects operating out of the apparently

real Beverly Hills company, Psi-Tech, using psychic power to

procure intelligence data by acts of high-tech conjuring. Some consist

of fragments of news stories; some are complete magazine reprints and

extracts. Many are iterations which seem to have been spawned from

older stories resulting in a conflation greater than the sum of

its parts.



If the HERF gun is the chupacabra of cyberspace, the  legend of John

Alexander is its equivalent of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu

Mythos. The cynic cannot help but notice it would seem quite impossible

to write anything on the subject without inadvertently adding to the

endless cyberspatial sucking black hole of John Alexander lore.







A glossary of terms

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



antilethal: n. Opposite the spirit of maximum lethality but still

deadly.



Usage: The _antilethal_ precision munition had incinerated only two

hundred civilians when it landed on a bunker in downtown Baghdad so

the generals could not understand why the international newsmedia

became so irritated.





hacker: n.  In this context, a young man very adept with computers

and networks, possibly a pawn of Libya or North Korea.



Usage: Indeed it was good the _hacker_ had been apprehended in his

single apartment in Raleigh because the government feared he was

only a step away from bringing down the entire system of international

banking.





HERF weapon: n. Always suspected but never seen, the HERF - or

High Energy Radio Frequency - gun is responsible for much

nettlesome corporate computer failure nationwide, according to

information warriors.



Usage: Dodson was relieved the computer security guru had been able

to convince management that the corrupted data on the network was the

work of an _HERF weapon_ attack on the corporation, not the boobytrapped

pornographic bit of software he had obtained from alt.sex.watersports.





information warfare: n. In this context, everything and nothing.

What hackers, Libyan agents, rogue nation-states, international

criminals, and pannational groups of religious fundamentalists

will conduct against America in the near future.



Usage:  America On-Line was besieged by a series of vexing and

seemingly pointless information warfare attacks conducted by

teenage hackers armed with AOL Hell, a program that automated the

sending of scrofulous electronic messages to other customers.





international rule of law: that which is invoked when another

country not in the West defies the military, political or business

interests of the United States.



Usage:  The Washington Post quoted sources at the Government Accounting

Office who maintained that pariah states in the Third World, their

exact identities classified, had broken the _international rule of law_

by enlisting hackers to attack U.S. networks through the Internet.





paradigm: n. pattern, an example, a model.



Usage: The pronouncements of John Alexander and Janet Morris were

the paradigm for the phlogiston of non-lethal orthodoxy.





remote viewing: use of psychic means to conjure up an accurate image

of something not physically observable by the "remote viewer."



Usage: The generals of U.S. Army intelligence were very impressed

when the non-lethal weapons guru described Muammar Ghaddafi sitting

in a dwelling somewhere near a sandy desert, all through the science

of _remote viewing_.





superscientists: n. The engineers, technicians and researchers

who develop weapons for the US military under the cover of black

projects. In glossy mainstream magazines they appear always

omniscient and generally anonymously.



Usage: The non-lethal weapons guru at Sandia National Laboratory

provided sage guidance for a crack team of _superscientists_ engaged in

Project Tacit Laurel, an effort to build an ultra/infra-sonic cannon

capable of inducing ineradicable, debilitating flatus in crowds of

hostile foreigners and terrorists.







LUDWIG COMPUTER VIRUS BOOK TO RETAIL FOR $395.00



The newest book from Mark Ludwig's American Eagle Publications

will retail for the astonishing price of $395.00 cash money.  Entitled

"Computer Virus SuperTechnology 1996," the book focuses almost 

exclusively on writing computer viruses for the Win95 operating 

system.



Ludwig commented that since specialty publications like Virus Bulletin

cost a similar amount for a one year subscription, he was moved to

ask a commensurate amount for "Virus SuperTechnology."  Ludwig added

he had already received 160 advance orders for the book. Since the

book's production cost comes out to between one and two dollars

per copy, as an exercise it is left to the reader to perform the

arithmetic and calculate the net gain on an initial print run of five

hundred.



The unusual cost prices "Virus SuperTechnology" almost completely out

of reach of the archetype teen virus-writer but squarely in the domain

of corporate domestic and international computer security organizations,

software developers, the U.S. government, foreign powers, military

planners engaged in "information warfare" projects and the occasional

lunatic with a large amount of discretionary cash.



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

In more Ludwig news, anti-virus software author Fridrik Skulason

declared at the end of July he was "seriously considering suing Mark

Ludwig" in a post to the Usenet's alt.comp.virus newsgroup.



"It seems that his latest CD-ROM includes a copy of [my] F-PROT anti-virus

program, including the file that specifically states that distributing it

together with viruses is absolutely forbidden," Skulason wrote.  He added

he was interested in securing a lawyer willing to prosecute a case against

Ludwig based upon his complaint.



Asked for comment, Ludwig was indifferent, laughing a moment later.

"Let him sue," he said.  Ludwig indicated he felt any suit would

be meretricious.  "What could he do?  Take my computer? I doubt he

could even find my office."





THE KAISER OF MICROSOFT IS MOVED TO AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER AFTER

BOMB SCARE





"We will roast the Great Satan in his lair."



                  --Ayatollah Khomeini, on America around

                  the time of the hostage crisis





On the first day of August, the Los Angeles Times ran a small article

in the business section that mentioned Bill Gates had been forced

to move a conference to an aircraft carrier in Seattle harbor because

of a bomb scare.



The article focused on Microsoft's use of WindowsNT to stimulate

acquisition of Win95 by those in corporations who hadn't yet jumped

on the bandwagon. This was part of a larger plan to position the company

as a major provider of "content" for the Internet. [1]



In addition, Microsoft-NBC, a new 24-hour news channel is part of the

grand march. Even more "content" is to be furnished by a travel magazine

called . . . and this is the truth, Mungo Park.



The most interesting part of the news blip was the bomb scare.



"We are willing to take substantial risks" said Bill in interview from

the redoubt of the aircraft carrier Constellation, at anchor off Seattle.



Indeed.



Three hundred reporters and Bill were evacuated to the aircraft

carrier after a bomb scare at the Bell Harbor International Conference

Center, where the Kaiser was orchestrating his press conference.



It was said the Constellation was in town for "a fair over the weekend."

No truth to the rumors the Kaiser was inspecting it before purchase as

the foundation for MSNAF, the Microsoft Naval Air Force, or that he was

seen reading the old Strategic Air Command treatise, "Bombing as a Means

of Social Coercion." [2] However, it is true the Kaiser's new home resembles

a high-tech bunker and that he has been securing art and culture at a

frenetic pace: the electronic rights to the photos of Ansel Adams, the

images of the Barnes collection and one big-deal Washington propagandist,

Michael Kinsley.



Notes:



1. Crypt Newsletter advises readers "content" is the in vogue euphemism

for major bull in these categories: straight advertising; infotainment;

exhortations to buy software, hardware, advice, durable goods, airline

tickets or preferred stock; pictures of naked or semi-nude women; resume

and "career" services aimed at the emergent nation of American

gaberlunzies created by the same types of computers

that run the Web; hagiography of movie and rock stars; rampaging

hucksterism; and panegyrics devoted to the sovereigns of financial

swindle.



2. Some smart alecks have suggested Crypt Newsletter makes up book

titles like "Bombing as a Means of Social Coercion."  Well, yes

and no.  "Bombing as a Means of Social Coercion" was suggested by

the real book, "Bombing to Win" by Robert Drake.  Despite

a title superior to "Bombing as a Means of Social Coercion,"

"Bombing to Win" is actually an examination of the ineffectiveness

of strategic bombing as a tool for achieving absolute military,

political and social aims. Shhhh.  Don't tell the Kaiser.







SOME NOT SO OBVIOUS BUSINESS WITH DOS IN WIN95



by Stephen Poole



When Windows 95 was released to much hype last August, you could

read in any number of computer magazines that Windows 95 "no

longer needs DOS!"  Windows 95 was presented as a seamless,

integrated 32-bit operating system with all of the old traces of

klunky old real-mode DOS removed.



That was misleading nonsense.  While it's true that a

32-bit DOS system is used with Windows 95, that system is *only*

active while the Windows 95 environment is active, i.e.., while the

Explorer desktop is active.  At all other times, the system is in

a state that's quite similar to the older DOS 5-6.22 regime with

HIMEM and EMM386 handling upper memory.



This has obvious implications for system security, especially in

anti-virus work, so I wanted to take a closer look at it.  A few

simple tests will demonstrate the key points.



The first test is to start an MS-DOS prompt and run the command

"MEM /DEBUG | MORE" or a program such as QEMM's MANIFEST.  If

you've done this under DOS 5-6/Win 3.x, you may be startled at how

familiar the memory layout is.  Look closely, and you'll see the

FILES, HIMEM, and even our old friend WIN.COM, in memory.



The next test is better. But first, let me explain a few things.

As a programmer, I frequently want to exit Windows, make some changes,

and then restart Windows.  It's a real pain to have to reboot the

system each time.  Suspecting that there is a 16-bit DOS system

hiding somewhere "under" Windows 95, how can I get to it?  And

how can I prevent Win95 from hanging the system when "Shut Down"

is selected at the end of the session?



First, let's set things up so that we'll get a DOS prompt when we

start the computer.



(NOTE: The following isn't recommended for novice computer users.)



1.  Click the MS-DOS Prompt icon again.  When you get to the DOS

prompt, switch to the root bootable subdirectory -- this is "C:\" on

most systems.



2.  Enter the command "ATTRIB MSDOS.SYS -s -h -r" at the prompt to make

MSDOS.SYS visible to your editor.  Under Win95, MSDOS.SYS is actually

just a hidden ASCII text file containing some configuration info.



3.  Use your text editor to open MSDOS.SYS.  Under the [options]

section, you should see:



        BootGUI=1



Change this to:



        BootGUI=0



Be careful not to change anything else in the file.  Save the file,

exit the DOS box and shut Windows down. Now reboot the computer.

You should come back to a normal-looking DOS prompt.  At this point,

you could enter "win" at the prompt, just as you did under Win 3.1x.

Win95 would start.  But . . . when you Shut Down, the computer still

hangs, same as before.  (Try it.)



We're halfway there . . . how can we get *back* to that DOS prompt

when Windows 95 shuts down?



This is pretty simple.  All you have to do is put the "win"

invocation in a .BAT file, so that you're starting Windows 95

indirectly.  Create a little batch file named WINTEST.BAT containing

these lines:



        win

        mode co80



(You can use a number of different DOS commands after the "win". I

chose "mode co80" to clear the screen.  All we're really want to do

is tell the system that we have something else that needs to be done

when Windows shuts down.  Otherwise, Windows will still hang the

computer.)



If you then enter "wintest" at the DOS prompt, the batch file will

execute, and Windows 95 will start up.  But this time, when you shut

it down, you'll get the "wait" screen, followed by "it's now safe

to turn off" . . . followed by a DOS prompt!  How about that!



Finally, some people might argue that these tests aren't fair,

because we're forcing Windows 95 to load some DOS components.

Doesn't this mean that it might be "different", somehow, when

operating under these conditions? To settle that question, here's

one more test:



Go back to your MSDOS.SYS file and restore it to its original

state (change "BootGUI=0" back to "BootGUI=1").  Then insert the

line "Logo=0" under the [options].  All this does is turn off

the pretty startup screen, so that you can see what's happening

during the boot.



To eliminate any possibility that extraneous DOS software is

being loaded, temporarily rename your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT

files to CONFIG.BAK and AUTOEXEC.BAK.  Shut down Windows and

reboot the computer.



This time, you'll get a DOS-style startup screen.  Watch closely,

and you'll see HIMEM and EMM386 load anyway, even though there's

no CONFIG.SYS file to tell DOS to load them!  (Hmmm . . . why would

a 32-bit operating system be loading some old DOS-style memory

management stuff?)



If you try this, don't get nervous when the screen goes dark, and

stays dark for some time before you see the Explorer desktop.

Since you told Windows not to display the "logo," you get a blank

screen.)



To restore the default behavior, delete the "Logo=0" line, use

ATTRIB -s -h -r to change MSDOS.SYS back to a hidden file, rename

your CONFIG.BAK and AUTOEXEC.BAK files to the original file names and

reboot the computer.



It seems like DOS hasn't really gone away after all. And this

means that even a pre-configured Win95 system straight out of the

box IS vulnerable to at least some older DOS viruses.



TECHNICAL DETAILS FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED:

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



Windows 95 is basically a souped-up Win 3.1 (let's call it Win 4.0)

running atop a souped-up DOS 6.22 (we'll call it DOS 7.0).  While

there are some nice enhancements (such as long file names and

32-bit DOS, at least while the Windows 95 environment is active),

the apparent "seamless integration" itself is primarily smoke and

mirrors.  By displaying a graphics logo during the bootup, for

example, Win95 can hide the fact that it's actually loading

HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE -- just as it did under old DOS.



The system's startup code, the code loaded from the system area of

the machine on start, automatically loads HIMEM.SYS and

EMM386.EXE even if you have no CONFIG.SYS file or have left those

lines out of it.  It then executes your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, assuming

that you have one, and finishes by executing the equivalent of a "win"

command entered at the DOS prompt -- just as if "win" were the last

command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.



At that point, you're still under a fairly normal DOS regime with

upper memory support.  Only after WIN.COM starts VMM32.VXD, which

sets up the VxDs, are you actually running under a 32-bit

protected-mode system.



Here's another important point.  When you start a DOS program or

an MS-DOS Prompt in Windows 95, the system will create a special

"DOS box" just for the program (also called a "virtual 8086 machine",

or "V86 box"). The system will essentially create a copy of

_whatever_was_in_memory_ at the moment that WIN.COM was started

for this purpose. And if a virus was in memory just before

WIN.COM started, you'll have a copy of that virus in each DOS box!



When you select "Shut Down" from the Start Menu, WIN.COM regains

control and displays the message, "it's now safe to shut down",

followed by a system hang.  The pertinent machine instructions

in WIN.COM look something like this ...



            cli         ;Disable interrupts

            .

            .           ;(Do some other stuff here)

            .

        lockup:

            hlt         ;Halt instruction

            jmp lockup  ;Loop forever, producing a hang



To summarize, the complete sequence, from bootup to shutdown, looks

something like this:



INITIAL BOOTUP: BIOS is in control, regardless of operating system

SYSTEM BOOTUP:  IO.SYS takes control, sets up 16-bit DOS/HIMEM/EMM386

WIN95 STARTUP:  WIN.COM starts VMM32.VXD, sets up the 32-bit system

WIN95 IN OPERATION: 32-bit protected mode system, DOS in 32-bit VxDs

WIN95 SHUTDOWN: Back to the equivalent of 16-bit DOS/HIMEM/EMM386 *



(* this last one isn't strictly accurate in all cases, but it'll

work for our purposes.)



Simply put, the only time that you're not under a 16-bit or

DOS/HIMEM regime is when Win95 is in actual control of the PC

-- when you've got the Explorer Desktop.



It's possible, of course, that some unusual configurations of

Windows 95 won't exhibit the precise behavior described above.  But

in my tests, the basic sequence outlined above holds true for every

configuration that I've tried.



Finally, Microsoft does keep track of what people are saying about

Windows95 and has recently begun adding features to make it more

difficult for programmers to use "undocumented functions" that exist in

Windows.



Most programmers have to resort to these types of "undocumented functions"

to do the really cool stuff.  Under Windows, you can call a system

function either by name or by "ordinal." Without getting needlessly

technical, you can consider this a function "number."  Most of the really

juicy undocumented functions must be called by this "number" method.

You can't get at them any other way.



Windows has a (documented) way to get the number for a function that you

want to use.  It has worked fine in the past but recent releases of

Windows 95 now return a garbage value if you try to get certain system

function numbers.



Matt Pietrik investigated and discovered that Microsoft has added a

little XOR encryption, a garbling value called the "obsfucator" (sic).

Seriously, that's the name of it!   Anytime someone asks for the number of

an undocumented system function, the system will garble the true number

with this "obsfucator" value!



(Those interested in more should see "Windows 95 Programming Secrets" by

Matt Pietrik.)



[Stephen Poole is one of the authors of the ARF Anti-virus.]





LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: LUDWIG'S $395.00 BOOK NOT AN OBSTACLE

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



Crypt:



OK. [Ludwig's virus book] is cheap compared to my own computer

that I bought with cash as a teenager for a full 3800 Australia dollars.



So I would not say that teen virus-writers will not buy it.



Hell, a few teen virus-writers buy the book together and one has a scanner

to make a mass copy on the Net.  Hello, every teen virus-writer on

the Internet has it. Hacker point of view: Harder it is to do, the more

fun to complete. Just another target.



pcdolding, CRYLUX, Australia



[Let's see if I have this straight.  You're writing that you paid almost

$4000 for a computer but you nevertheless advocate use of a team to

steal a book of computer viruses that only costs a tenth of that, all

for the community of virus-writers on the 'Net. And who says "hackers"

don't know how to deal with the media!?! --Crypt]





CRYPT WEBSITE DEEMED GOOD

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



Crypt:



Well, basically I'm new to the computer and the world of the Internet.

I've been moving around a lot overseas so I never had a chance to own or

use a computer for very long. I'm very interested though, now that I've

tried it. It's fascinating, all of these networks and highways [and]

how they're connected. I've read your newsletters and I find them very

interesting . . . I've always been interested in hackers and would like

to acquire the knowledge to do so myself. If you could give me any

information that would help me understand these things it would be great.

Thanks for your help. Your web page is awesome.



-Jess







Crypt:



Thank you for the information given. Sometime, somewhere, someone

will put it all to good use, maybe even me.



Matthew Graves







-=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





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 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.



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 and news on:



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   real news. Take a skeptic's look at the information highway!



   The Crypt Newsletter database is also extensible.  Future

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   The complete index of topics 1992 - 96 is on the Crypt News

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

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





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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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

This issue's software comment provided by the inimitable Stephen Poole.





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

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

CA.



copyright 1996 Crypt Newsletter. All rights reserved.

