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Crypt Newsletter #21
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CRYPT NEWSLETTER 21
Dec-Jan 1993/1994
Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.)
Media Critic: Mr. Badger (Andy Lopez)
INTERNET: [email protected]
COMPUSERVE: 70743,1711
Crypt Newsletter BBS: 818.683.0854
Crypt Newsletter voice: 818.568.1748
[The Crypt Newsletter is a monthly electronic magazine
distributed to approximately 12,000 readers
on the Internet. It features media handling of
issues dealing with computers and society, news in science
and technology, and satire.]
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IN THIS ISSUE: The new stooge is worse than the old:
Bobby Ray Inman at Defense . . . Doomsday Machine
set to put sand in orbit . . . Behold The Man: Mr.
Badger goes back in time . . . Digging up "When HARLIE
Was One . . . In The Reading Room: "Digital Woes"
by Lauren Ruth Weiner . . . Five minute analysis of
computer viruses . . . much more.
MEET THE NEW STOOGE, WORSE THAN THE OLD STOOGE: DEEP BLACK
COLD WARRIOR BOBBY RAY INMAN NOMINATED AS CLINTON DEFENSE HONCHO
"Never trust anyone with two first names." -- an old saw
The profoundly anti-democratic Cold War apparatchiks who run
the Pentagon got what they wanted for Christmas, when the
Clinton administration covertly sacked Democrat Secretary of
Defense Les Aspin and named as his successor glabrous
ex-spook, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman.
Media pundits hectored Aspin relentlessly for a
daisy chain of baffling gaffes which included handling of
homosexuals in the military, that embarrassing rebel ambush
in Somalia and messing with the reputation of national hero
Colin Powell. Privately, according to the L.A. Times,
Aspin was hated by unnamed Pentagon finks because he was
"disorganized."
More probably, the secretive leaders ensconced within the lofty
tabernacle of the US high command never forgave Aspin for his
congressional efforts to shed light on the more covert aspects
of the military budget during the reign of George Bush.
Such is not the case with Bobby Ray Inman, former head of the
super secret National Security Agency, vice director of
the Defense Intelligence Agency and deputy director of the
Central Intelligence Agency.
"Admiral Inman was one of our nation's highest-ranking
and most respected military officers. He was a four-star admiral
whose career in the Navy and in our intelligence community
and in private business has won him praise from both Democrats
and Republicans who admire his intellect, his integrity and his
leadership ability," said President Clinton, in a pro forma
statement about the incoming secretary.
While this may be so, there are many other interesting facets
to Inman's career in the military during the Cold War.
For example, from Crypt Newsletter 19:
In 1977, inventor Carl Nicolai . . . applied for a patent for
[his] Phasorphone telephone scrambler, which he figured could
[be sold] for $100 - easily within the reach of John Q. Public.
For that, the NSA [under Bobby Ray Inman] slapped a secrecy order
on him in 1978. Nicolai subsequently popped a nut, took his
plight to the media, and charged in Science magazine that
"it appears part of a general plan by the NSA to limit the
freedom of the American people . . . They've been bugging
people's telephones for years and now someone comes along with
a device that makes this a little harder to do and they oppose
this under the guise of national security."
The media went berserk on the issue and . . . Inman revoked
the Phasorphone secrecy order.
About the same time, Dr. George Davida of the University of
Wisconsin was also served with a NSA secrecy order, in response
to a patent application on a ciphering device which
incorporated some advanced mathematical techniques.
Werner Raum, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin's
Milwaukee campus, promptly denounced the NSA for messing with
faculty academic freedom. The Agency [capitulated].
Both setbacks only made the [agency] more determined to exert
ultimate control over cryptography. In an interview in
Science magazine the same year . . . Inman stated that he
would like to see the NSA receive . . . "born classified
control over all research in any way related to cryptology,"
according to James Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace."
In 1979, Inman went further, making this speech before the
Armed Forces Communications Electronics Association:
"Application of the genius of the American scholarly community
to cryptographic and cryptanalytic problems, and widespread
dissemination of resulting discoveries, carry the clear risk
that some of the NSA's cryptanalytic successes will be duplicated,
with a consequent improvement of cryptography by foreign targets.
No less significant is the risk that cryptographic principles
embodied in communications security devices developed by NSA
will be rendered ineffective by parallel nongovernmental
cryptologic activity and publication . . . All of this poses
clear risks to the national security . . . While some people
outside NSA express concern that the government has too much
power to control nongovernmental cryptologic activities, in
candor, my concern is that the government has too little."
While deputy director of the CIA, Inman challenged the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, balefully demanding
that all scientists should move to submit their work for
governmental review, and that if a mechanism was not constructed
for doing so, the public would become outraged over the loss of
America's technological secrets to foreign rivals. If this were
to happen, legislation would be quickly enacted to control them,
said Inman. The AAAS interpreted this as menacing: a thinly veiled
allusion to a strongly held belief that the government should
have complete power over intellectual pursuit.
In 1981, Inman again threatened cryptographic scientists
with the possibility the NSA would move to induce Congress
to impose stricter control on them if they did not submit
more of their work for government review. He also called the
situation where privately-developed encryption was stronger
or equivalent to government technology "undesirable."
In fact, only in 1985, when Inman had moved to the private
sector, was he involved in anything which seemed different
than his long-term support for final government control over
scientific free exchange and encryption. At the time, Inman
was placed on a National Academy of Science committee tasked
with producing recommendations for increasing or relaxing
government export controls. Surprisingly, one of its conclusions
was, "The need for the unhindered exchange of large volumes of
data in international commerce and research indicates that a
strict system of control is neither feasible nor desirable."
This paints an extremely complex picture - one not at all in
the same ballpark with the polite noises coming from the
mainstream media about Inman bringing better business practices
to the Pentagon. And it also raises suspicion that President
Clinton has no idea what he's saying when he continues to
promise the current administration stands for change. For Bobby
Ray Inman - if his past record says anything about him - is
just another old Cold Warrior, and one that's gotten a new
lease on life, at that.
THE SPACE FLEET MADE OF GOLD: DOOMSDAY MACHINE CONTINUES
DEVELOPMENT, SET TO BOOST 1,000 - 2,000 POUNDS OF NOTHING
[DEPENDING ON WHO'S TALKING] INTO ORBIT FOR $13.7 BILLION
DOLLARS
In another of those Pentagon projects few people seem to know
anything about, the second MILSTAR satellite will carry
either 875 pounds of aluminum, 2,000 pounds of sand or 2,000
pounds of sand encased in aluminum - depending upon who's
talking about it - as ballast in place of another super secret
project which went bust as launch date approached.
The MILSTAR - or Military Strategic and Tactical Relay system -
is a set of satellites designed to implement an extended US
thermonuclear spasm, launching weapons in robotic salvo after
salvo, reducing an enemy's cities and hard targets to Trinitite,
the Trinitite into siliceous dust and the dust into a low
atmospheric suspension in a war which lasts weeks or months
after the 50 states themselves have been pounded into ruins.
In 1983, MILSTAR was dubbed one of the more "sinister" deep
black programs run out of the Pentagon by William Arkin, a
D.C.-based nuclear weapons analyst. Through the Reagan
years, MILSTAR development ballooned out of control, completely
beyond the ken of voters and most Congressmen. The ultimate
war the MILSTAR would help fight was with the Soviet Union. And
even though engineers and strategists had no clear idea how to
wage such a conflict or even build maintainable communications
for a theoretical world-spanning battlefield where thousands of
nuclear warheads have been exploded, MILSTAR ground on.
Weirdly, with the end of the Cold War and two changes in
administration, the MILSTAR project has continued, even though
there have been one or two efforts to stop it. Its extended
thermonuclear warfighting mission remains, although
the military has made some placating noises about a
conventional role.
According to Ralph Vartabedian of the Los Angeles Times,
the MILSTAR program is worth $27.4 billion dollars.
Over the years, other watchdog groups and reporters like
Pulitzer-winner Tim Weiner have quoted values in line
with Times figures. At this price, the two assembled MILSTAR
satellites come to $13.7 billion a piece, about seven times
more expensive than the 50-ton B-2 stealth bomber, designed to
smash enemy redoubts with fusion bombs. At the MILSTAR's current
cost, the military could, instead of sending sand into space as
payload, boost 4,000 pounds of solid gold, make the entire
satellite out of solid gold, gold-plate 2,000 pounds of sand
or launch gold, sand and gold-plated sand and _still_ come in
within the project's budget. It is unknown what strategic
military role sand, aluminum or sand encased in aluminum has
in the super secret MILSTAR.
The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center in El
Segundo, California, appraised the second MILSTAR at $1 billion.
BOBBY RAY INMAN, PART II: TECHNICAL CONSULTANT TO
'THE INVADERS'?
And now for something really zany:
Bobby Ray Inman is one of the central characters
in "Alien Contacts," a new book on UFOs published by William
Morrow. In "Alien Contacts," Sec'y of Defense nominee Inman
is painted as one of the key heads of the Cold War intelligence
structure close to the military-industrial complex's project
in charge of keeping a lid on the urban myth
"crashed-UFO-in-hangar-18" story. Derived straight from
Whitley Streiber's embarrassing "Majestic" and the frankly
idiotic "X Files" on FOX TV, "Alien Contacts" publishes goony
pictures of the gap-toothed Inman and thanks the defense head
profusely in its acknowledgements for helping to leak the
truth about deep black military aerospace applications
utilizing alleged UFO technology.
[Note bene: Prior to the break-up of the Soviet Union, a few
American technical journals published articles by respected
Communist scientists noting a rise in the general Russian
citizenry's belief in UFO's, astrology, Jeanne Dixon-type
fortune-telling and related helium-fueled flights of fancy.]
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BEHOLD THE MAN: MR. BADGER GOES BACK IN TIME TO TOUR
1993 IN PRINT
The holidays are here, and the attendant tribulations.
Blue-haired grannies, normally content to trade valiums
with the cat, have been roused by the sight of Bob Hope in yet
another christmas special. Said grannies now clog every road
within ten square miles of the local mall. The malls
themselves are filled with those squalling little demons
of Mammon called children. Don't be fooled, all the crying
is only a cynical sham. Deep inside, the fiends are marking
the location of the nearest kitchen utensils. If Santa
isn't gracious, we'll all find ourselves staked to the floor
as the carrot grater is taken to our flesh.
I _would_ recommend staying at home, but the American media has
its own vile Christmas habit: the year end review,
the year in pictures, the top news stories of the year, the most
interesting people of 1993. Not only does it lack originality,
it's a crass, insulting attempt by elitists to dictate thought
and opinion while making you feel sad and inferior during the
most emotionally vulnerable time of the year. Somehow _they_
are going to tell _you_ what the year was about. Somehow,
_they_ know who _you_ found interesting. Tommyrot! What kind
of egotistical prima donna really believes that readers are
going to care? Someone send these used-car salesmen back where
they belong, please!
Well, in any case, here's Mr. "Xmas Bandwagon Jumper" Badger's
review of 1993. The quick and dirty:
The Bad News: Our subculture is being flooded with gullible
consumers, flacks posing as journalists, and crafty salesmen.
The Good News: There's a small minority of vocal critics who
don't buy party orthodoxy.
The Better News: The vocal minority is smarter. Funnier, too.
As luck would have it, the reviews slated for December
proved to be the perfect springboard for summarizing the
foibles and follies of the past year. Now's the perfect
time to break out the nitrous -- Mr. Badger is going to
assume that you're ready for a stream of consciousness input
free of visible parameters (or logical organization). The
usual cast of deceivers, deceived, charlatans, shamans and
corrosively cynical is present. Assign labels as you wish.
Current quotes were assembled by scanning the selection at
the local library (If you want a full Nexis search, YOU send
donations).
THEY GOT THAT RIGHT
"62: Hard-2-Read Magazines
Misdeeds: Ray Gun, Wired, Mondo 2000, Future Sex.
Mitigating Factor: Not worth reading anyway.
CyberScore: Apple-Kodak-Sony-sponsored 'Open Wider,'
a much-hyped CD-ROM subtitled 'The Electronic Multi-
Media Magazine,' sucks."
-Spy Magazine's 100 Worst People, Places,
and Things of 1993, January 1994
"...the detailed characteristics of the Ultimate Display
described in this section are products of the author's
imaginations, with due thanks to the creators of Star Trek."
-A Survey of Virtual Environments:
Research in North America, Part One;
Virtual Reality World, Nov/Dec 1993
"Computers in America's classrooms are often outdated, and
teachers aren't adequately trained to help their students
use them, concludes a study financed by the National Science
Foundation."
-Associated Press, December 1993
"A decade ago, computers were going to solve our nation's
educational problems. NOW, it's going to take a combination
of interactive CD's, a level of Virtual Reality technology
that doesn't exist, gigabytes of memory, the power of a
Cray, and an interface accessible to four and five year olds.
In the meantime, one must wonder if reliance on a
non-existent form of technology really means that . . .
educational reformers have no good ideas for educating
children in the present."
-Crypt Newsletter #16
". . . U.S. students say they use their home computer two hours
a week on average, less than the western European students.
Regardless of country, the most common use of nonschool
computers was to play games."
-Associated Press, December 1993
"Sears . . . built a state-of-the-art computer system to manage
its inventory, sales, payroll, and supply system. . . . A
technological marvel, the system proved all but useless as
a business tool except to track, nanosecond by nanosecond,
the corporation's decline as the nation's top retailer."
-The Productivity Pit,
Across the Board: The Conference Board
Magazine, October 1993
"Information-systems specialists tend to see computers in
terms of what they do, while senior corporate officers view
them in terms of what they cost; seldom is anyone in a
position to know whether what computers do is worth what
they cost."
-The Productivity Pit
"Office automation allows firms to be competitive, regardless
of size."
-Taking the Computer Cure;
ABA Journal, December 1993
SAMPLE: SELF-DELUDED CORPORATE PROPAGANDA ACTION MEMO #1245672
" . . . As a result of its new [computerized] training approach,
savings at Banc One are expected to be in the millions."
-Computer Based Training at Banc One;
The Bankers Magazine, Nov./Dec. 1993
Written by Jack Compton, VP for client
services at Banc One Services Corp.
THEY GOT THAT RIGHT, II
"[Software Business Technology] reported that business PC
users waste 5.1 hours each week 'futzing' with their
computers -- learning how to use them, waiting for them
to do things, checking the things they do, and so on."
-The Productivity Pit
". . . although Boeing conducted rigorous experiments two
years ago that found meeting software could cut the time
some projects take by 90%, the aircraft giant is not using
it at all today . . . experts outside Boeing speculate that
managers may not have enjoyed finding themselves in an
electronic spotlight where decisions that had once been
their sole province were now fair game for comment and
change by everyone."
-Groupware Goes Boom; Fortune, December 27,
1993
"If the benefits of information technology were hard to detect
in manufacturing, they have been just plain invisible in the
service sector. The products of service companies are
processed words and crunched numbers -- the things that
[Information Technology] does best . . . service businesses on
average doubled their investment in technology per worker in
the 1980's. Yet productivity in that sector stagnated,
growing in the 1980's by an anemic 0.1 percent a year."
-The Productivity Pit
"Without a clearly defined strategy, vendors and consultants
have led many banks to believe that new or more technology
will lead them to increased earnings or substantially reduced
costs. Technology can unquestionably help banks to reach
these objectives -- but are these an institution's only goals,
and are important advantages created when they are
achieved?"
-A Strategic Approach to Technology,
Bankers Magazine,
Written by James Neckopules, Senior VP
at BEI Golembe, a bank consulting firm
[I know, I promised no personal input, but this is so
outrageous it merits special consideration. Here's a
consultant to banking firms asking if increased profits
create "important advantages." Well, one of the advantages
is that the bank can still afford to pay consulting firms
that engage in bait-and-switch sales tactics. This senior
VP points out that the use of computerized imaging turned
out to be more costly than microfilm and inefficient to boot,
and that widely touted branch automation perpetuated
pre-existing inefficiencies. All this came about because
the banks let technology dictate business decisions, when
they should be supporting "clearly defined strategic
objectives." Of course, when you ask a bank manager what
his objectives are, he'll tell you they're to increase
earnings and reduce costs, leaving everybody back where
they started -- except the consultant, who can now buy that
house in Key West.]
DOES THIS MEAN IF I BUY A COPY OF QUICKEN I'LL BE
ELIGIBLE FOR MENSA?
"To make a mint on software, just think. Think alone, if
you can, or at worst with a tiny team of fellow nerds.
Write a program that helps other people think better --
a spreadsheet, a database, an electronic checkbook. Run
off a million copies on floppy disks, at a cost of a buck
or two each. Then sell them at $195 plus tax."
-Software's Cash Register,
Forbes 400, 1993 Edition
NEXT: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A TALENTLESS IDIOT IS GIVEN
A THESAURUS AND TOO MUCH TIME BEFORE DEADLINE
"Synergies . . . have evolved between Sony Pictures and Sony
Music . . . Sony Music edged out Time Warner's records group
this fall to become the U.S. market share leader once
again."
-Creating a Seamless Company;
Forbes, December 20, 1993
CRYPT CASE STUDY: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN ENTERTAINMENT
EDITOR THINKS HE CAN PRODUCE A REAL TECHNOLOGY STORY or
MUSICIAN MAGAZINE MAKING THE LUDICROUS ASSUMPTION THAT
THE SCIONS OF GRUNGE ROCK REALLY KNOW HOW TO USE
COMPUTERS
"...record companies are making plans to sell music directly
to consumers via cable, phone, and satellite transmission -
cutting out record stores. Meanwhile, musicians and managers
wonder why they will need the record companies at all."
-Future Shocks: The End of the Music
Business as We Know It;
Musician, December 1993
EARTH TO ACCOUNTANTS, EARTH TO ACCOUNTANTS!
"Is There a New Computer Operator System in Your Future?"
-Cover of the Journal of Accountancy,
November 1993
INSIDE: 10 WAYS TO PLEASE YOUR MATE, CINDY CRAWFORD -
"I'M JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE", 200+ PAGES OF SICKENING
ADS, HOW TO SUSPEND YOUR SENSE OF DISBELIEF AND MAKE
YOUR PURSE FOUR DOLLARS AND CHANGE LIGHTER
"Inside, the way to:
-save a fortune
-make a bundle
-get high tech
-check the oil
-spot a rip-off
-stop a leak
-size up software"
-Cover of Know-How, "A new kind of women's
magazine"
WE HAVE MET THE BUZZWORDS AND THEY ARE US
"For us, at least, 1993 will go down as the year of the
'information superhighway' (1994 is already penciled in as
the year we find out what that phrase means)."
-Spy Magazine
FOR THE LIP-READER TECH HOBBYISTS WHO NEVER COULD GET MORE
THAN A C+ IN LINEAR ALGEBRA
"The Bell Atlantic/TCI merger agreement made people realize
that the data highay already exists to a large degree."
-Building the Information Superhighway;
Popular Mechanics, January 1994
THEY GOT THAT RIGHT, III
"Here we were at the country's largest computer show ever
[Comdex]--with reportedly more than 170,000 attendees --
. . . and the transfer of voice, information and people came
to a screeching halt.
Electronic Superhighway? More like a country road. Phone
lines were so overwhelmed by the deluge of people either
calling, sending faxes or modeming information that often
they were crossed."
-Business Marketing, December 1993,
from the issue titled: "Converging
Chaos: Scrambling for Position in
the Info Tech Marketplace"
"Washington, D.C., has outlived its usefulness in American
political life. Congress can conduct its business nearly
as easily and much more efficiently using a computerized
bulletin board . . . So let's move [them] . . . It is time
for our legislators to become citizens of this country
again instead of denizens of some remote, privileged land
where they never have to pay bills. Let them forsake the
fern bar for the local diner. Let them send their children
to local schools. Let them park at downtown parking meters
and walk on local streets like everyone else."
-Lauren Ruth Wiener, in "Digital Woes,"
1993
FOR THE LIP-READING TECH HOBBYIST WHO NEVER COULD GET
MORE THAN A C+ IN ANYTHING [or MORE BLATANT TOFFLER-ISM]
"One concept involves software worms called Knowbots that
crawl from source to source looking for the answers to
questions. You wouldn't have to know where the information
is -- the worm would just keep looking until it found the
desired data."
-Building the Information Superhighway;
Popular Mechanics, January 1994
WHAT WOULD 1993 BE WITHOUT AT LEAST ONE CHOKING BLAST OF
PHLOGISTON FROM SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS BILL?
". . . Bill Gates took the stage . . . and insisted that
'moving to electronic publishing and CDs is a step people
should be taking right now.' Gates predicted that soon
'almost all of the information that gets published will be in
this form,' and said that within 18 months, one-half
of all PCs shipped will be equipped with CD-ROM drives.
Not so, says Scitex founder Efi Arazi. He called slow-
to-access CDs a 'stillborn' format. Arazi . . . says paper
will remain the dominant medium, but publishers will,
in the future, transmit page files directly to readers."
-Digital Dilemma: How Soon Is Now?,
Folio: The Magazine for Magazine
Management, December 1, 1993
IN NEED OF A SOUND BEATING
"Sony's Mickey Schulhof [CEO of Sony Corp. of America] bets
the company: He's fast integrating it into the world's
first interactive entertainment giant"
-Cover of Forbes, December 20, 1993
IN NEED OF EVEN SOUNDER BEATINGS
"The engineers at Sony are turning out an impressive array
of alternative media players. Too bad the gizmos are so
incompatible with one another."
-Format Frenzy; Forbes, December 20, 1993
A BORN YESTERDAY BAEDEKER
"The new standard [in modems] is 9600 . . ."
-A Baedeker for the Electronic Tourist,
US SNOOZ & WORLD REPORT, December 6, 1993
FOR THE LIP-READING YUPPIE SWINE WHO NEVER COULD GET ABOVE
A C+ IN HIGH SCHOOL ARITHMETIC
"The new standard is 9600 bits per second . . . about
four times as quick as [2400] . . ."
-A [Brain-Dead] Baedeker for the Electronic
Tourist, US News & World Report, December
6, 1993
FIND THIS BIRD AND ARREST HIM FOR BLASPHEMY
"On this information superhighway of the future, what feature
would you most like to see? 'Clean restrooms.'"
-"Shoe," a popular comic strip
IF I DON'T QUOTE MYSELF, WHO WILL?
"What self-destructive bent could cause a man - or badger - to
read all the tripe being published about the Internet? It's
foul, dark, and rank as only journalism can be."
-Crypt Newletter #19
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FROM THE RUBBISH BIN: WEIRD IRON FROM 1972 IN "WHEN H.A.R.L.I.E.
WAS ONE"
We were going through the smoldering trash pits behind
Crypt editorial last week with the aim of finding something
completely unique for readers in our end-of-year issue.
Ha! And what did we come up with? Something you can use
to confound the neighborhood nitpicker who thinks John
Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider" was the first mention of
the computer virus in a science-fiction novel.
"The Shockwave Rider" was published in 1975; "jargon-laden
and stodgy" "The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction" called
it. Whatever, John Brunner was such a prolific writer
within the genre, it's possible _he_ got the idea for
a computer virus from David Gerrold's "When H.A.R.L.I.E.
Was One," published in 1972.
Gerrold, known by some as the shunned creator of the
Star Trek atrocity, "The Trouble With Tribbles," has
written a lot of material over the years, including
"The Man Who Folded Himself," a weird, almost unreadable
time travel story with extremely long and florid interludes
seemingly devoted exclusively to describing a homosexual
orgy; the "War Against the Chtorr" series - lumbering,
military sci-fi about (and I am not making this up)
carnivorous, giant, _pink worms_ and the usual generic load
of pro forma "Gone With The Wind"-on-a-distant-world-in-a
-distant-time contemporary dimebag novelized pap. But
"H.A.R.L.I.E." is about a super-computer designed to be
human and its fight to keep from being turned off.
And, actually, it's better than it sounds.
In the book, the system designers eventually dope out that
H.A.R.L.I.E. (Human Analog Robot Life Input Equivalent) may
have designed a computer virus to get itself into other
networked government computers.
It's interesting stuff, when you consider it was 1972:
"You have a computer with an auto-dial phonelink. You put
the VIRUS program into it and it starts dialing phone numbers
at random until it connects to another computer with an
auto-dial. The VIRUS program then injects itself into the
other computer. Or rather, it reprograms the new computer
with a VIRUS program of its own and erases itself from the
first computer. The second machine begins to dial numbers
until it connects with a third machine . . . There were a
few people, programmers mostly, who realized the VIRUS
program was more than just a practical joke. For instance,
why did it have to dial phone numbers at random? Why not
provide a complete directory of other computers' phone numbers
. . . Or, you could set the program to alter information
in another computer, falsify it according to your direction,
or just scramble it at random if you wanted to sabotage
another company."
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Gerrold is
talking about a "worm," with a description broad enough to
encompass the basic idea behind Robert Morris's Internet
Worm, more than a decade later.
Although little like Harlie or the worst possibilities of the
VIRUS as described by Gerrold has come to pass, other
ideas - as related to computer security - have remained
timely.
"The problem is that it's very hard to maintain any kind of
security system when anyone with a console and a telephone
can tap into your banks. A lot of smaller companies with
their own computers can't afford . . . really sophisticated
protection," one of the characters in Gerrold's book explains.
Gerrold writes in "HARLIE" that the idea for a virus came
from another science-fiction writer; whether he's refering
to Brunner, someone else, or just making it up isn't clear.
You might enjoy using some of your holiday cash money to
grab a copy of "When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One," _if_ you can
find it. The book was republished as a fix-up in 1988,
which we haven't seen. That edition "[removes] once-modish
references to drugs and [updates] the computer technology,"
claims "The Ultimate Guide . . . "
------------------------------------------------------------
IN THE READING ROOM: "DIGITAL WOES" WARS WITH THE
MACHINE GOD
"Everyone is a lousy futurist" writes Lauren Ruth Weiner
in "Digital Woes" (Addison-Wesley, $22.95) after bashing
short stories by John Campbell and E. M. Forster, both
about imagined machine-filled futures.
Weiner is a technology writer for the last of the red-hot
skeptics. "Digital Woes" is notably lacking in the kind of
over-extended metaphors her colleagues love; you won't find
anything as cutely dumb as "roadkill on the information
superhighway" in this book.
Instead, there's lots of material few want to write
about: like how no one had the slightest idea how to develop
the software slated to implement Ronald Reagan's genial,
technically uncomprehending ideas for the Strategic Defense
Initiative, where even a modest 10% failure rate would result
in the fiery end of Western civilization; how a tiny
slip up, by one person, resulted in TRW's credit-reporting
software red-flagging the financial records of all
property-owners in the town of Norcross, Vermont.
While writing about the popular idea of a surgeon using some
kind of virtual surgery software to perform a delicate operation
on someone in an operating theatre 3000 miles away, Weiner nudges
the reader firmly toward the real example of a computer-controlled
radio-therapy machine called the Therac-25 which burped, pumped
painful and fatal doses of radiation into two patients in
Galveston, Texas, and sent a malfunction code to the technician's
console.
"Digital Woes" is well-researched, heavy stuff - some chapters
of the book appear _superficially_ unappealing; just not the kind
of material which lends itself to intermittent browsing or the
frothy, publicist's blurb. It takes a great deal of effort to
describe for a lay audience how software engineering differs from all
other branches of hard science in that its final product is not bound
by physical laws. Software, Weiner explains, doesn't have to take
into account nature: therefore when it staggers out into the
real world it can be counted on to misbehave, hang, or produce
results spectacularly unexpected, no matter how exhaustive
development may have been. When this occurs, the meat
will go onto the floor; the toast will always land butter-side down.
Weiner makes the case, then, that software _should not_ be blithely
allowed to replace complex life-critical functions which
experience and history show are handled best by thought processes
which are uniquely human property.
But before you leave with the idea that "Digital Woes" is so dense,
reading it might be akin to chewing through a
bag of cement mix, know that Weiner has a finely tuned sense of
humor, flashing a healthy amount of outrage and sarcasm with
statements like:
" . . . I'm dubious. I've played with several [artificial
intelligence] programs on different occasions, and it seems to
me that nothing but a pathetic wish for a fairy godmother could
make users believe they were getting understanding and
guidance."
Or,
"People have been . . . speculating about virtual pornography.
. . . high-tech masturbation may enable those who can afford it
to sail away from the frightening and forbidding Dark Continent
of the opposite gender."
In "Digital Woes," Weiner finally concludes that we can have
lots of stuff - software for everything, computerization for
jobs insanely unsuited for nonhuman supervision, complete sudden
or incremental loss of privacy, the total destruction of most
concepts of copyright and intellectual property - all this, maybe
more, in a rush which will atomize and isolate the community
of man. But shouldn't we slow down and think about it first?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
THE CRYPT LAWS OF DIGITAL INTEGRITY: A SET OF ADVANCED
THEOREM'S DESCRIBING THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF THE
INFORMATION HIGHWAY
You might want to skip this if you're already late for
something, it's kind of complicated.
I. The Kouch-Badger Digital Dirt Quotient
X
______ = 1
Y
where X = the absolute number of "for pay" bulletin
board systems in any area defined by the observer,
and
Y = the absolute number of bulletin board systems
in that area, defined by X, which devote over 50%
of their data volume to the storage of digital
pornographic imagery.
II. The FIDO Benchmark Information Highway Index
W = 1
------
f
The FIDO Information Highway Index is a broad-based
expression which can be used to determine the "W",
or "WORTHLESS COEFFICIENT" of _any_ echo-mail
news group on _any_ wide area network.
"W" is ALWAYS inversely proportional to f, the square
of the absolute number of news group moderators known
to be peddling some kind of merchandise AND/OR
moderators who belong to some kind of "professional"
club which the observer is not a member of. For example,
if f is large, the "worthless coefficient" will
be a very small fraction, far from the _eigenvalue_
of 1.
Not only does the "W" coefficient expose bald-faced shills,
it also appropriately prorates news groups moderated by
committee-driven thought control. This is a powerful
equation and is best used sparingly, as liberal application can
cut the useable number of news groups - in this case,
equivalent to the "worthless coefficient" - to a value which
asymptotically approaches zero.
III. The Ideal Mag Law
ZD = nRT
Here, ZD is equal to the Ideal Mag value, a number
returned by multiplying n, the number of square inches
of advertising in a magazine; R, the number of columnists
who reserve space in their monthly articles for recommending
services or merchandise peddled by the parent corporation
of the magazine; and T, the number of topics in any
individual issue which just happen to coincide with
an identical advertising entry.
The Ideal Mag Law was derived from rigorous statistical
thermodynamic analysis of the entire class of Ziff-Davis
publications, for which the ZD value is named.
Often, ZD values are too high to be plotted in relationship
to absolute page counts without the use of semi-logarithmic
methods.
High ZD values are associated with periodicals where
publishers and managing editors feel duty-bound to push
advertising aims over reliable consumer news.
------------------------------------------------------------
ANALYSIS OF GARDEN VARIETY COMPUTER VIRUSES IN
FIVE MINUTES [WELL, ALMOST . . .]
[Originally published in the U.S. Bureau of Public Debt's
Information Systems Security Monitor newsletter, October 1993.
Used with permission.]
Occasionally, as a network administrator you may run across
a virus which isn't covered by any of your current protection
schemes.
Lucky you!
However, analyzing the virus - once you've isolated it - need
not be a traumatic affair, or even necessitate a call to an
expert. In most instances, you are fully capable of handling
the job. Don't let your mind be gripped by insecurity. Yes,
I will say it again: "You, too, have the skill to analyze
and disassemble computer viruses!" And this news piece will
tell you how to get started.
If you've discovered a virus, your first goal was to get rid
of it. However you found it, you've set your colleagues to
work eliminating files you suspect or are sure are infected.
But you might want more information. The need for analysis
and disassembly - or reverse engineering of the virus to the
point where you adequately understand its instructions and
purpose - arises.
A real world example is the recent spread of the Butterfly
virus within the Telemate communications program shareware archive.
Because Telemate is a popular program, nearly everyone who
received original copies of the recent version of Telemate also
received copies of the Butterfly virus.
Assume that you have users who use Telemate. All might have
executed copies of the Butterfly virus. Simple VISUAL scrutiny
of the Telemate programs with any common file viewing/listing
utility (DOS, Windows, OS/2, PC Tools and Norton Utilities
versions all include such tools) would have revealed the
following:
0380 4E 8D B6 50 02 8D 96 2C-02 52 EB 3C B4 1A BA 80 N..P...,.R.<....
0390 00 CD 21 33 C0 33 DB 33-C9 33 D2 33 F6 33 FF BC ..!3.3.3.3.3.3..
03A0 FE FF BD 00 01 55 33 ED-C3 0B DB 74 19 B5 00 8A .....U3....t....
03B0 8E 47 02 B8 01 57 8B 8E-48 02 8B 96 4A 02 CD 21 .G...W..H...J..!
03C0 B4 3E CD 21 33 DB B4 4F-5A 52 B9 07 00 33 DB CD .>.!3..OZR...3..
03D0 21 73 18 E9 9F 00 FF 47-6F 64 64 61 6D 6E 20 42 !s.....Goddamn B
03E0 75 74 74 65 72 66 6C 69-65 73 FF 8B D6 B8 02 3D utterflies.....=
03F0 CD 21 72 B5 8B D8 B4 3F-B9 04 00 8D 96 04 01 CD .!r....?........
The above shows a portion of a program infected with the
Butterfly virus.
Note the text "Goddamn Butterflies." This is not standard fare
for any program and should raise an eyebrow, unless everyone
on your staff is possessed of an unusual sense of humor.
Programming a text searching tool for "Goddamn Butterflies" would
uncover any file with the embedded string on a searched disk,
i.e, any file infected with the Butterfly virus.
In the real world, your job would have been done!
But you might suspect that not everyone in your building
or on the network has gotten the alert, in which case you
would expect to hear from Butterfly once or twice again.
You might want to know some more information
about the virus.
You would then use a commercially available disassembler to
quickly translate the virus into its basic instructions. One
assembler for the job is Sourcer (V Communications, Walnut
Creek, CA), but there are others equally good.
The first step would be to take an original file infected with
Butterfly and place it on an isolated machine for virus testing.
In the same directory as the original Butterfly-infected file
would be placed "bait" .COM and .EXE programs which contain
nothing more than hexadecimal "00" or "90" words. (Utilities
exist to create such programs. WRITE is one, and it's found in
most anti-virus on-line program libraries.)
The reason for the bait file is so that the virus can be
clearly seen in an infected file. Any instructions written by
the disassembler will then belong ONLY to the virus. This
simplifies analysis, since you won't have to interpret whether
the disassembler's results refer to the infected file or the
virus.
To infect the bait files, execute the virus infected file. If it
is a direct action virus, it will add itself to one or more of
the baits. A simple directory listing will reveal a file size
change if this is the case. If the virus is a memory resident
infector, you will have to execute the virus-infected file and
then execute the baits consecutively. Because some viruses have
what are called by the vulgar computer press "stealth
characteristics," immediately doing a directory listing of the
files may not show any change. Such a "stealth" virus, when
present in memory, will confuse the machine sufficiently so
that such a directory listing is useless.
Reboot the test machine CLEAN with a write-protected system
disk. Now, do a directory listing. All changes in bait file
size will appear unless the virus is a RARE overwriting
stealth virus. These cases are so odd, I feel
secure in saying you need not worry about them at all. So we won't.
Instructing the disassembler to analyze the Butterfly-infected
file will, if we use Sourcer as an example, produce a summary of
key virus intstructions labelled the "interrupt usage list."
It looks like this:
Interrupt 21h : DOS Services ah=function xxh
Interrupt 21h : ah=1Ah set DTA(disk xfer area) ds:dx
Interrupt 21h : ah=3Dh open file, al=mode,name@ds:dx
Interrupt 21h : ah=3Eh close file, bx=file handle
Interrupt 21h : ah=3Fh read file, bx=file handle
Interrupt 21h : ah=40h write file bx=file handle
Interrupt 21h : ah=42h move file ptr, bx=file handle
Interrupt 21h : ah=4Fh find next filename match
Interrupt 21h : ax=5701h set file date+time, bx=handle
Because you've used a bait file to examine the virus, these raw
instructions belong to Butterfly. They are not as cryptic
as they initially appear.
You may have already identified the individual in your
organization who is the assembly language tinkerer. He can tell
you what the above instructions mean. In lieu of that, you can
use the "New Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC
& PS/2" or the "MS-DOS Encyclopedia" for an interrupt
usage list which contain easily read tables that translate the
above interrupts and their functions into meaningful English.
Using either of these references, you see the analyzed program:
--opens files (function 3Dh) very common, a virus has to open
a file before infecting it.
--read file (function 3Fh) very common, a virus has to read a
portion of the file - generally at the beginning - to determine
if it has or has not already infected it.
--write to file (function 40h, the virus-programmer's magazine
40Hex is named after this), very common, a virus has to write
its code out to the potential host.
--find next filename: match (function 4Fh) very common for
direct action viruses like Butterfly. The filename function
points to the file mask, *.COM, embedded in the virus code.
The virus, therefore, seeks .COMfiles to infect.
For a virus, this is very straightforward. And it is a
commonplace, real world example. Butterfly appears to do
little more than look for .COMfiles to infect. As the virus
doctor, you would be alert for functions which
check system time, date, DOS version or any other particular
variable on a machine.
If such were also included in the above list, you would
presumptively conclude it has NO use beneficial to your
machines and might indicate an activation trigger which would
cause the virus to do something even more unpleasant than
merely replicate.
For example, such antisocial behavior would be shown by an
appearance in the above list of an occurrence of interrupt
13h - an absolute write to the disk drive. In viruses, this
is almost always associated with an attempt to destroy all
the data on an affected machine. It is not
critical to know when such an event is triggered. You SHOULD
assume that it could happen any time the virus is called.
It's also quite possible you might encounter an encrypted
virus. One example, a German virus called SANDRA, was quickly
disassembled by many experts when it appeared early in 1993.
Using Sourcer to analyze SANDRA was a little different than
Butterfly. The interrupt list, in this case, was nonexistent,
because the majority of the virus was encrypted and hidden
from cursory analysis by a dissasembler.
The initial Sourcer analysis looked like gibberish, a small
segment of cryptic assembly code instructions, then some words
that almost appeared to be English and quite an oodle of
hexadecimal values arrayed in columnar "define byte"
(or "db") format.
This immediately told the experienced that SANDRA was encrypted,
and rather weirdly at that.
The next step, then, was to trick the virus into decrypting
itself and then writing the "plain text" version to disk. This
was simple in theory, only slightly more difficult in practice.
Envision that the portion of the virus researchers wanted to
execute was the decryptor loop, a small stretch of
instructions which unscrambled the virus in memory. Might not
that segment of cryptic assembly code that Sourcer produced on
its first pass contain the keys to the decryptor? Yes, good
guess! And it looked like this:
seg_a segment byte public
assume cs:seg_a, ds:seg_a
org 100h
sandra proc far
3C44:0100 start:
3C44:0100 F8 clc
3C44:0101 E8 002F call sub_2 ;<----FIG. 1
3C44:0104 FB sti
3C44:0105 F8 clc
3C44:0106 <--execute to this address jmp loc_6
3C44:0106 E9 73 01 db 0E9h, 73h, 01h
3C44:0109 3C data_3 db 3Ch
3C44:010A 00 data_4 db 0
You notice that SANDRA starts by calling a sequence of
instructions dubbed "sub_2" (see FIG 1.) by Sourcer. Looking
down the listing (which is not included here) you see that
"sub_2" is another segment of plain-text assembly
code. This was the viral unscrambler and when we returned
from it, the virus was unencrypted and ready to do its work.
The next job for SANDRA, then, was to begin its infection. Looking
at the assembly commands above, you see SANDRA jumps (jmp) to
a new location, which looked encrypted in the
listing researchers started with.
The idea they used was that by executing the virus right up
to the "jmp," it was possible to get SANDRA to translate itself
in memory without it looking for a file to infect, infecting
that file and regarbling itself.
This was an easy task to accomplish with any software debugger.
I used the ZanySoft debugger program because it's almost
idiot-proof and requires little input.
I started the ZanySoft debugger by typing:
C>ZD86
ZanySoft is menu driven. Using its "File" drop-down menu to
load the SANDRA virus-infected file, I brought up its "Run"
menu and double-clicked on the "go to xxxx:xxxx" command. This
told ZanySoft to execute the loaded program to a certain
address - which it prompted me to supply -- and stop. The
address needed was the one corresponding
to the "jmp" in the above listing. Sourcer had supplied it, and
it is ear-marked in the diagram: 0106.
By typing in 0106 at ZanySoft's prompt and hitting <enter>,
the SANDRA virus was decrypted. Returning to the "Files" menu
and selecting the option, "Write to .COM." wrote the SANDRA
virus to the disk from memory, in its "plain-text" or
unencrypted form.
Disassembling this version of SANDRA produced an interrupt table
list similar to that obtained from Butterfly, because THIS time
the virus was unencrypted, its instructions wide open to analysis.
The only differences were trivial: SANDRA deleted or attacked
a number of shareware and retail anti-virus programs.
There are many other variants on this theme. Some virus
programmers attempt to disguise their creations with tricks
which attempt to confuse disassemblers. I can say with some
assurance that these attempts are not particularly successful
and that the odds you will run into such an animal are less
than being run over by car. For example, Memory Lapse virus
is another example which gained widespread distribution on
a NightOwl shareware CD-ROM. Like Butterfly, this virus is
extremely simple and yields to the same analytic methods
described.
Is all this so mysterious? YES, I hear you say. Perhaps you
feel a little overwhelmed. But if you sit back and look at the
examples of Butterfly and SANDRA once again, even though you
think you know next to nothing about assembly language or
virus code, with persistence, you will be able to use a
disassembler listing to make some informed deductions about
any virus. And you'll be able to do it in about five
minutes, with a little experience.
Further reading:
1. Hruska, Jan. "Computer Viruses And Anti-Virus Warfare".
1992. Simon & Schuster/Ellis Horwood.
2. Ludwig, Mark. "The Little Black Book of Computer Viruses."
1991. American Eagle, Inc. (Tucson, AZ).
3. Norton, Peter & John Socha. "Peter Norton's Assembly
Language Book for the IBM PC." 1989. Brady Books.
[Additional notes:
1. Because of space constraints, this article makes no attempt
to deal with boot-sector infecting viruses.
2. The only other _recent_ real world occurence of a virus
of note deals with a program called Satan Bug, perhaps
because it affected the Secret Service rather severely. Satan
Bug is a great deal more complicated than Butterfly, Sandra
or Memory Lapse. It is encrypted in a variable and complex
mannner which requires more skill to deal with.
Consider though, if you're curious, that the original source code
for the virus along with an analysis was advertised heavily on
the Prodigy on-line network by the virus's author. It is unnecessary
to disassemble the program, as it is well understood. You
might ask your anti-virus vendor to allow you
to see a copy of its source code; should said vendor be reluctant
to allow you to look at something so widely publicized in a general use
forum, ask your local high school hacker. The source code is
so common, if he doesn't have it, chances are he can surely
produce it for you in a matter of hours.]
----------------------------------------------------------------
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Besides Crypt InfoSystems BBS (818.683.0854), there are many
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On COMPUSERVE, abridged versions of the newsletter
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--------------------------------------------------------------
Crypt Newsletter editor George Smith lives in Pasadena,
CA. Curmudgeon-at-large Andy Lopez lives in Columbia,
SC. They enjoy taunting each other electronically.
©opyright 1994 Crypt Newsletter. If you wish
to use portions of this publication, ask first.
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