CRYPT NEWSLETTER 30
March - April 1995

Editor: Urnst Kouch (George Smith, Ph.D.)
Media Critic: Mr. Badger (Andy Lopez)
INTERNET: 70743.1711@compuserve.com
          Urnst.Kouch@comsec.org
          crypt@sun.soci.niu.edu
COMPUSERVE: 70743,1711


IN THIS ISSUE: Cliff Stoll's "Silicon Snake Oil" . . .
Confusion to your enemies: another brief tale of
mystery and intrigue . . . "Network Security" and
Protect Your Privacy", two books from Prentice Hall reviewed . . .
A Kevin Mitnick time line . . . Hell's Angel Ralph "Sonny"
Barger . . . Crypt Newsletter white paper on TECHNOQUACK:
Part 1:  The Golden Pizzle of Information; Part 2:
You and the entropic heat death of the universe; Part 3:
Sifting corporate pseudo-data . . . Rock 'n' rollin,
groovy-lookin' Dan Farmer's excellent adventure . . . Crypt 
Newsletter WWW page . . . much more.


CLIFF STOLL CAN'T SAY THAT, CAN HE? or NOTHIN' BUT
GOOD TIMES AHEAD IN "SILICON SNAKE OIL"

I don't know if Cliff Stoll ever met historian
Christopher Lasch, but if he did they certainly would
have had a lot to talk about. Just before his death,
Lasch closed his last book, "The Revolt of the Elites"
with a biting assessment of the current mania with
technology:

"Those wonderful machines that science has enabled
us to construct have not eliminated drudgery,
as . . . other false prophets so confidently predicted,
but they have made it possible to imagine
ourselves as masters of our fate.  In an age that fancies
itself as disillusioned, this is the one illusion - the
illusion of mastery that remains as tenacious as ever."

Stoll's "Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the
Information Highway" (Doubleday) is steel-plated with
the same underlying idea, that much of what is said blindly
exTOLLing <heh-heh, couldn't resist> networks, interconnectivity
and computing is illusory - at best exaggerated, at worst,
completely fabricated. Of course, there have been other books
which hoe the same row. Lauren Ruth Wiener's "Digital Woes"
and Theodore Roszak's The Cult of Information," both
excellent, come to mind.  But neither deliver
the same engaging personal style Stoll effortlessly
inserts into "SSO" which is a greater read for it.

The book deals directly with the mysterious mental disease
that is now infecting large numbers of seemingly
rational and very vocal people: That computers are the new
philosopher stones of American society, capable of
transforming the lead of inequality, crumbling public
education; unresponsive, corrupt political processes;
stagnant career opportunity; or the moribund sex life
into different varieties of revitalized techno-alchemical
gold. And it means for the greater part
of the making of "Silicon Snake Oil," Stoll must have
been sleeping with his bullshit detector plugged in.  However,
he's more gracious, calling it his "bogometer."

To wit:

"In physics, you measure the brightness of light with a
photometer and voltages with a voltmeter.  Bogosity -- the
degree to which something is bogus - is measured with a
bogometer," Stoll writes.

"Alan November, a consultant for the Glenbrook high
schools in Illinois, believes that today's students are
in the test preparation business.  In the May/June 1994
issue of _Electronic Learning_, he says that pupils will soon
build information products that can be used
by clients around the world.  Teachers, in turn, will
become brokers 'connecting our students to others across
the nets who will help them create and add to their
knowledge.' That one pegged my bogometer."

Mine too.

Passages like these are a delight to the closet curmudgeon.
A mere thirty pages earlier, Stoll notes "I've also noticed
that the computer cognoscenti hang on to their jobs
by creating systems where they are at the chokepoints of
the organizations.  Workers who don't know computers get
trampled, discounted or pushed to the side."

As for information being free?  Bah, Stoll indicates.
"I hear this from those who duplicate software or break
into computers.  It's techno-Marxism -- abolish private
property and we'll all be happy." The Free Software
Foundation, writes Stoll, claims "that copyrights
harm society by preventing the free flow of information."
You can tell he doesn't believe much of it.  Slogans and
cyber-aphorisms of this nature are conveniences in 1995,
usually used to rationalize the process of someone else, but
never the individual spouting said cliches, being ripped off.

I would suspect little, if any, of this will endear Stoll
to the disciples of the church of Toffler now encamped
within the gilded walls of the mainstream media. That's
good.  He also has doubtless alienated the cypherpunks
movement by essentially stating that while
their technical accomplishments are neat, the problem
they're trying to solve - the preservation of information
privacy through the employ of cumbersome, almost
unusable anonymous remailers and cumbersome,
almost unusable encryption technology - looms trivial
in the global picture.  In fact, "Silicon Snake Oil" gores
so many sacred cows in cyberspace it's guaranteed the author
will be regarded like a dysenteric hog loose in the streets
of Mecca on some parts of the net.

That would be a shame because "Silicon Snake Oil" has
genuine heart. There's not a mean bone in it; neither will you
find the sour breath of the corrosive cynic. Paradoxically,
Stoll confounds the reader's expectations by appearing to
be a hopeless romantic in everyday life, and, by contrast,
the nets, where he is up to his neck in connections and still
very obviously in love with the pulse of the cursor.  In the
end, "Silicon Snake Oil" is saying the future could be a pretty
dim, brutish place if we trade the critical and analytical
capacity, stuff that ain't broke, a real voice on the end of
the telephone line or the tough teacher for the newest
software, indigestible floods of valueless, curiosity-numbing
information or glib futurology that is simply faster and
louder than real life. That's a great message from a
killer of a book.


CONFUSION TO YOUR ENEMIES, PART I: ANOTHER VERY BRIEF 
TALE OF MYSTERY AND INTRIGUE

Virus-programmer Clinton Haines, a science student at the
University of Queensland and native of Brisbane, Australia,
makes it into the newsletter this month for making
himself the Dark Avenger of Oz. [For those unfamiliar
with the name "Dark Avenger," consult glossary at end of
piece.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Glossary:

1.  Dark Avenger: the name given to the Bulgarian virus
writer elevated to the stature of greatest virus-writer
in the world (0r "dean of virus writers") by another
Bulgarian named Vesselin Bontchev.  Programed Dark
Avenger Mutation Engine and Eddie computer virus, among
others. Symbolic leader of the "Bulgarian computer virus
factory." Long-range inspiration for American virus
writer, Priest.  For additional notes see back issues,
"The Virus Creation Labs."

2.  NuKE:  North American hacker group. Prime-movers:
Rock Steady, Nowhere Man (author of original Virus Creation
Laboratory software), John Buchanan.  Now inactive.


CONFUSION TO YOUR ENEMIES, PART II: YOUNG, FAST &
SCIENTIFIC: AUSTRALIAN VIRUS WRITER NO 
NERD: ENJOYS RUGBY, DAD A TENNIS PRO COACH

[by Peter Young]

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

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

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

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

[Thanks to Roger Thompson of Thompson Network Software and
Peter Young who provided timely material for this
set of articles.]


REVIEWED: "NETWORK SECURITY: PRIVATE COMMUNICATION
IN A PUBLIC WORLD" AND "PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY: A
GUIDE FOR PGP USERS"

"We believe the reason most computer science is hard
to understand is because of jargon and irrelevant details.
When people work with something long enough they  invent
their own language, coming up with some meta-architectural
framework or other, and forget the rest of the world
doesn't talk or think that way," write Charlie Kauffman,
Radia Perlman and Michael Speciner in the intro to
"Network Security: Private Communication in a Public
World" (Prentice Hall).

Yay!  That got the newsletter's attention and for the greater
part of this book, the authors stick to their claim.
"Network Security" is a well written textbook with a dry
sense of humor which, presumably, immediately dooms it
in the world of institutional education. The chapter on
"notation," or terminology, is a case in point:

"Computer science is filled with ill-defined terminology
used by different authors in conflicting ways, often by
the same author in conflicting ways.  We apologize in
advance for probably being guilty sometimes ourselves."

The authors then go on to anti-define the term "hacker."
"We do not use the term _hacker_ to describe the vandals
that break into computer systems . . . the criminals
termed 'hackers' are not brilliant and accomplished.  It
is really too bad they not only steal money, people's
time and worse, but they've also stolen a beautiful word
that had been used to describe some remarkable and wonderful
people."

And then they choose the name "Trudy" ("since it sounds
like _intruder_") to label malicious hackers.  Well,
the lead-in was pretty good.

The chapter devoted to malicious software is an interesting read.
The varieties of viruses and booby-trapped software are loosely
dubbed "digital pests" which is all that's really necessary
to understand the basic concepts of replicating, damaging
software.  It's in marked contrast to vendors within the
security software industry who often go out of their way
at conventions to coin new and confounding names for
various classes of essentially rubbish computer viruses.
Unfortunately, the authors do goof up their one boldface
definition of a virus, the _polymorphic_ variety.  They seem
to think polymorphic viruses have the ability to
magically shuffle the order of their instructions.  Not
so.  The better pieces of detection software which
decrypt these heavily encrypted viruses on the fly  and
identify them on the basis of the machine code
exposed beneath the repealed encryption wouldn't work if
the authors' beliefs were reality.  Actually, no software
scanner would work at detecting such
a virus.  In any case, the precise nature of polymorphic
computer viruses is of little interest or practical use
to the general reader, so the book is no worse for this
very small error.

"Network Security" devotes quite a bit of space
to the convoluted topic of electronic mail security, too.
In the section "Annoying Test Format Issues"  the
authors get down to the ugly reality of e-mail transit
on a worldwide network composed of
wildly different machines, software and fiendishly
idiosyncratic systems administrators.

"When sending a text message to someone on other systems,
we'd like the message to appear to the human on the
receiving end about the way it looked to the human who
sent it.  This is a messy, boring problem . . . The usual
method of solving problems like these is to define a
[standard] format . . . Unfortunately, there is no single
standard . . . format."

What?  And the reader still wishes to encrypt all his
trivial sex talk with Privacy Enhanced Mail (tm), too?

"Network Security" is also peppered with trenchant
asides which ease the heavy-lifting in chapters on the
mathematics of encryption, software geek-ese and
robust network design. The appendixes are a useful,
if oddly done, bibliography and a glossary with whimsical
definitions for various examples of techno-gobble like "zero
knowledge proof" as "what you write when you're
faking an answer on your math test."  Cool.

Much less interesting, but the recipient of superior
publicity, is William Stallings' "Protect Your Privacy:
A Guide for PGP Users," also published by Prentice
Hall.  Perfectly crafted, "Protect Your
Privacy" could very well be the final word on Phil
Zimmerman's Pretty Good Privacy e-mail encryption program.
It contains everything you need to now about PGP: origins,
rationale, implications, nuts, bolts and proper usage.

However, for the average computer user, it's "Who
cares?"  PGP remains, at best, non-essential for the typical
on-line addict, at worst, a pain-in-the-ass addition of
overhead to electronic mail.  Pretty Good Privacy
may, indeed, have spread simply because it was an
idea whose time has come, a revolution in technology so
sweeping no one could ignore it.

Uh, sure.

I prefer a simpler explanation: it was hyped to monstrous
proportion by everyone in cyberspace and almost as many
from the mainstream media.

Back in the real world, in the last two years the
majority of people who've pinged me with requests to
engage in Pretty Good Privacy protected e-mail pattycake
have used the program only for sex appeal.  Behind the wall of
impressive "military-grade" encryption came little
but annoying gossip or day-to-day chitter-chatter which
only the utterly mad would be interested in snooping.  And so
the U.S. government wants to try and pillory PGP programmer
Phil Zimmerman for loosing this software on the world?

There really is no God.


THE KEVIN MITNICK TIMELINE

1978 - Kevin Mitnick meets phone phreak Roscoe of
Roscoe gang while harassing a
HAM radio operator on the air in Southern California.

1980 - Eddie Rivera writes cover story on Roscoe Gang
for LA Weekly magazine.

1980 - December - Roscoe Gang, including Kevin Mitnick,
invade computer system at US Leasing.

1981 - Roscoe, Kevin Mitnick and an accomplice bluff
way into PacBell's downtown office after hours and
burgle documents and manuals.

Susan Thunder, paramour of Roscoe and member of
Roscoe Gang, squeals on Mitnick and PacBell burglary
to Los Angeles district attorney's office investigator.
Mitnick's home in San Fernando Valley searched; Mitnick, Roscoe
and accomplice subsequently arrested.

1982 - Roscoe pleas guilty to conspiracy and fraud.  Sentence:
150 days in jail.  Accomplice gets thirty.  Mitnick gets ninety
day diagnostic study by juvenile justice system, plus a year
probation.

Kevin Mitnick and Lenny DiCicco enter USC campus and begin
using student computers for hacking.

Eventually, campus police arrest Mitnick and DiCicco, handcuff
them to office benches.  USC drops any charges but Los Angeles
Police Department computer crime unit pursues Mitnick case.
Mitnick sent to juvenile prison in Stockton, California,
for breaking probation.  Sentence: 6 months.

1984 - Mitnick working for Great American Merchandising, a
company operated by acquaintance of family.  Begins running
unauthorized TRW credit checks and calling PacBell from
Great American.  Company
manager reports Mitnick to district attorney's office again.
Mitnick's home again searched.  Mitnick goes into hiding.

1985 - Mitnick resurfaces in Los Angeles, contacts DiCicco
who is now working for Hughes in El Segundo.  Mitnick comes
to Hughes and logs onto Dockmaster, National Security
Agency's public system.  DiCicco subsequently fired from
Hughes.

Mitnick enrolls at Computer Learning Center, Los Angeles.
Meets future wife.

1987 - Mitnick invades system at Santa Cruz Operation.
Santa Cruz police travel to Los Angeles to search apartment
where call coming into SCO originates.  It belongs
to Mitnick's girlfriend. Mitnick and girlfriend subsequently
arrested and charged with unauthorized access to a computer.
Charges against girlfriend dropped.  Mitnick's representation
bargains felony charge down to misdemeanor.  Sentence:
three years probation.

During period, Mitnick marries girlfriend.

1988 - Pierce College authorities contact LAPD about
Kevin Mitnick and Lenny DiCicco misusing campus systems.
Mitnick and DiCicco now
enrolled in computer class at Pierce. Mitnick and DiCicco
again become targets of LAPD investigation.

Mitnick attempts to pull down job at Security Pacific.
LAPD detective tips company.  Mitnick ejected from premises.

Pierce College begins disciplinary action against Mitnick
and DiCicco.  Both expelled.  They appeal unsuccessfully.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory computer break-in Pasadena, CA,
profiled in Los Angeles Times.  Attributed to Mitnick
and DiCicco in John Markoff's "Cyberpunk".

Mitnick using DiCicco's workplace as jumping off point for
hacking.  DiCicco begins talking to FBI.

With DiCicco cooperating, FBI arrests Mitnick for invading
Digital Equipment Corporation systems and allegedly stealing
software.  DiCicco also indicted.  Government proceeds to
attempt to convict Mitnick on four felony counts.  Defense
eventually gets prosecution to accept idea that Mitnick
addicted or psychologically compelled to actions.
Mitnick convicted and given one year sentence at Lompoc,
California. DiCicco pleads guilty to one felony.
Sentence: 5 years probation, community service.

Mitnick and wife separate.

1992 - Mitnick working at private investigating firm in
Calabasas while on probation.  FBI arrives to arrest Mitnick
for alleged break-ins at PacBell.  Mitnick again goes into
hiding.

1994 - California Department of Motor Vehicles issues
$1-million warrant for Mitnick's arrest on charges of
fraudulently trying to acquire driver identification.

Mitnick traced to Seattle, Washington, where he allegedly
worked as a computer "trouble-shooter."  Mitnick once
again on move.

Christmas - Mitnick accused of invading security expert
Tsutomu Shimomura's system in San Diego.

1995 - Mitnick hacks The WELL in Sausalito, California.
Few mention WELL security is routinely broken.  The 
WELL, security-wise, is known as a "hot"
system.

Mitnick and Shimomura become media sensations
after hacker's arrest in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Tracked by Shimomura, news hounds overhype events
into Dark Hacker v. rock'n'rollin,' groovy lookin' computer
security guru White Knight story.   Mitnick continually
portrayed as obese, foul-looking dump.  Reality shows Mitnick
well-groomed, rather fit.

Mitnick alleged to have broken into Netcom, stealing credit
card base in process.  Netcom's credit card base said to
be commonplace on 'Net.

Miramax announces aim of producing movie based on life
and times of Kevin Mitnick.

[Sources:  The Los Angeles Times, John Markoff's "Cyberpunk"
(Simon & Schuster), LA Weekly.]


THE AMERICAN OUTLAW: A BRIEF LOOK AT HELL'S ANGELS MAXIMUM
LEADER RALPH BARGER

    Dear Mr. President:

    On behalf of myself and my associates I volunteer a
    group of loyal americans for behind the lines duty in
    Viet Nam.  We feel that a crack group of trained 
    gorillas would demoralize the Viet Cong and advance
    the cause of freedom.  We are available for training
    and duty immediately.
              
                            Sincerely,

                            Ralph Barger Jr.
                            Oakland, California
                            President of Hell's Angels


    "[The Hells Angels] were a menacing bunch.  They were
    the kind of people Hitler recruited for the Brownshirts.  They
    liked to party and drink beer and stomp on people."
                   
                            --from E. Jean Carroll's "Hunter:
                            The Strange and Savage Life of 
                            Hunter S. Thompson"


When considering the case of alleged criminal hacker Kevin
Mitnick, it is interesting to look briefly at the example
of a bona fide American outlaw, Ralph "Sonny" Barger, the
legendary leader of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club.
Although appearing in countless newspapers, magazines and
books since 1967, Barger never achieved the notoriety the
fugitive Mitnick garnered in the first quarter of 1995.

Although Mitnick has served only brief stints in prison for
relatively minor charges, Barger recently celebrated
getting off two years parole after serving four years in
federal prison for conspiracy to dynamite a rival national
motorcycle gang, according to a recent article in the Los
Angeles Times. 

By his own account in the Times, Barger spent "most of
the '70's in prison . . . 12 or 13 years . . . Not much
considering all the fun I've had."  Prosecutors attempted
to convict the Hell's Angel in 1972 on a murder beef
dealing with the charge Barger killed a man who sold
the Angels bad drugs.  But, said Barger, "I was found 
innocent . . . "

Indeed, Mitnick's rep rates him as a dilettante public
menace, at least next to the deeds of the Hell's Angels.
In 1994, for example, the group has been connected with
three deaths: an execution in a Rockford, Ill., motorcycle
shop; and two non-Angel bikers killed in
a gunfight at a raceway in New York.  There have also
been bombings at Angels affiliates in Chicago and
Rockford.  Barger points out, however, that the majority
of incidents of this type are perpetrated against members
of the Angels own class.

Although there are many so-called "biker" films,
Hollywood has been unable to make a picture chronicling
Barger and the Hell's Angels since the group's inception
in 1957.  By contrast, Miramax has already committed to
fielding a motion picture on the life and times of
Kevin Mitnick.  Barger has never cooperated with mainstream
moviemakers although an independent producer has made
claims about finally fielding a Hell's Angels script this
year.

Today Barger still lives in Oakland with his wife Sharon.  He
maintains a custom motorcycle shop; she promotes 
Sonny Barger T-shirts on the side.  The Times commented they
are merchandising Sonny Barger's Cajun Style Salsa.
At the beginning of the '80's, Barger lost his larynx to
cancer.  Now he speaks through a throat patch.

"I'm certain I went to prison because I used cocaine . . .
I don't know exactly how to explain it, other than you
do a lot of stupid things you wouldn't do if you
weren't loaded," said Barger to the Times.

[Ralph "Sonny" Barger - American Legend T-shirts:
Sharon Barger, POB 4708, Oakland, CA 94605]



CRYPT NEWSLETTER SPECIAL INSERT:  IDENTIFYING TECHNOQUACK


I.  THE GOLDEN PIZZLE OF INFORMATION SPEAKS:  NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE
    INSISTS WORLD TO BE TRANSFORMED BY DIGITAL BUTLERS &
    ADVERTISING NEWS

[No, this is NOT made up.]

As the blitzkrieg of the Toffler media-Wehrmacht continues
its double-pincer attack deep into the rear of
American credulity, MIT Media Lab FeldMarschall Nicholas
Negroponte is ever in the vanguard.  Promoting his new
book, "Being Digital" (Knopf), in the pages of
Business Books Journal (Volume 6, No. 1), Negroponte
predicts "digital butlers" are the great agents of
change for the future.

"Ten years from now, your telephone will not ring in
the middle of dinner with some dumb machine or human
trying to sell you something," writes Negroponte.
"Instead you will be advised in a timely, unobtrusive
way about things you might really be interested in
knowing about, because you are in the market for a
canoe, new car or white truffle."

The "digital butler" will be the drone you use to
inform the world of your need for a white truffle.
It will diligently perform this duty in the background
like a faithful English manservant.

"Television will become like book reading, a medium
of choice, one you pick up when you want,
and curl up in bed with if you wish," Negroponte
continues. [Forgive the Crypt Newsletter for
laughing. The newsletter foolishly thought TV was already a
"medium of choice."]

"The big issue in the future of TV - not books -
is advertising, which will just have to become news,
not noise," says Negroponte.


II.  HOW YOU CAN TELL WHEN YOU'RE ADDING TO THE PROBLEM OF
     INFORMATION OVERLOAD THUS HASTENING THE INEVITABLE
     ENTROPIC HEAT DEATH OF THE COSMOS (or 10 MASTER STROKES
     TO MENTUFACTURY)

1.  Your electronic mail sign-off contains a line like
"Finger <yourname>@sententious.dork.edu for PGP key."

2.  You have something to do with the MIT Media lab.

3.  You are a hobbyist who mistakes being a
voyeur 40 hours a week with genuine experience.

4.  You have your own World Wide Web home page because . . .
well, because your hat size is greater than your in-seam,
actually.

5. You fancy yourself a manager of a bulletin board system
for shareware, nude pictures of girls or gay men, pirated
software, computer viruses, adult chat, Star Trek debate,
UFO's, holistic health, astronomy and boring picture files
cribbed from NASA or any combination of such.

6.  You spend time on Internet Relay Chat asking others
to marry you or discussing your excess or lack of
intestinal flatulence.

7.  You often tell complete strangers of your findings
on an international conspiracy uniting the "Bilderbergers,"
the TriLateral Commission, the reborn Man-God George Bush
and an industrialist research venture aimed at implanting
carcinogenic lithium metal chips in the index fingers
of all US citizens.

8.  You have the latest minor version of Pretty Good
Privacy.

9.  You film low rent pornography and pass it off as a
computer game.  Or, you film a low rent 15-minute
movie starring washed up actors and pass it off as
a computer game. Or, you enjoy low rent porn stars and
washed up movie actors being paraded around in
15-minute movies passed off as computer games.

10.  You confuse science and American culture.
Often.


III. INFORMATION WEEK MAGAZINE:  A GOLDMINE OF
     CORPORATE PSEUDO-DATA AND TECHNOQUACK AT THE SUPERMARKET
     NEWS STAND FOR ONLY $2.95

[This ISN'T made up either.  Honest.]

In the March 20 issue of Information Week magazine
staffers Kolbasuk McGee and Michael Fillon
determined that "honesty is still the best policy."
They interviewed Las Vegas consulting firm
Lousig-Nont & Associates and were told that
people with "high integrity . . . tend to possess
desirable employment characteristics."

"Honest workers are frequently more productive,
sociable and punctual, and are less apt to abuse
sick time or otherwise steal from their employers,"
insisted Gregory Lousig-Nont, a suit whose photo
exuded a comfy amount of warm, hand-wringing
sensitivity.  Lousig-Nont's claims were buttressed
by an impressive sounding "independent" college test that
only coincidentally employed his honesty questionnaire.

Honesty is still the best policy - whew, the mind reals
at the sheer audacity and backbone of the finding.

The issue also included a sprawling, written, info-mercial
for Database Associates International.

Paraphrasing, it said something like this:

"A data collection is a [collection] of data of
interest to a specific user or group of users.  Data
collections are derived from the base data created by the
data acquisition component.  The services provided by the
management component include a data maintenance service
for deriving new data collections from warehouse base
data and a distribution service for exporting warehouse
data . . ."  A color chart illustrated the flow of
data and "meta data" from the data warehouse to a red
tank of mixed data and "meta data" outside the data
warehouse proper.

Data, data, everywhere!  Boy howdy!



IV.  GLOSSARY OF TERMS:


1. Golden Pizzle of Information: authority figure used to
declaiming in the dialect of technoquack, e.g., director
of MIT Media Lab, et al.

2. "Honesty is the best policy": a convenient slogan,
irrelevant to this editorial insert.

3. mentufactury:  A kind of pompous term for bullshitting,
especially the variety associated with flacking for your
information business, hardware, software or the Internet.

4. meta-data: see pseudo-data

5. pseudo-data: test results, charts, bar graphs,
numbers and statistics produced by the convergence of
mentufactury and technoquack. Sometimes known as advertising.

6. technoquack: 1. an individual, e.g. a consultant or
member of the Alvin Toffler Wehrmacht, who specializes
in mentufactury; 2. the speechifying of a technoquack
or someone who hasn't quite become one yet.


DAN AND VIETSE'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE!

Surely John McAfee and the programmer of the Michelangelo
computer virus were smiling as the US national media once again
went into overdrive this March mentufacturing the spectacle of 
yet another rock 'n' rollin,' groovy-lookin' security whiz-bang 
named Dan Farmer, his cyberpal Vietse Somethingorother, and their 
alleged hacker tool from the Inferno, SATAN.

SATAN, a piece of software said to be the ultimate Unix/Internet
hacking/information sniffer, was said to be "like a gun, and this
is like handing the gun to a 12-year old," trumpeted the Los
Angeles Times, accompanied by a picture of rock 'n' rollin,
groovy-lookin' Dan Farmer duded out in combat fatigues and
saucily perched on his computer workstation at Silicon Graphics.

"It's like distributing high-powered rocket launchers 
throughout the world free of charge, available at your local
library or school, and inviting people to try them out by
shooting somebody," echoed the San Jose Mercury News.  "I hope
some crazy teen doesn't get ahold of one," added the Oakland
Tribune.

Noticeably absent from any of the news pieces was any description
of the reality of SATAN: that it was an almost indigestible lump of
cobbled-together software and documentation designed to
operate on the most high-powered, resource-equipped computers.
Farmer's SATAN documentation, which actually looks like the result
of putting three hundred computer geeks in a windowless room and
letting them run wild on word processors for a couple of months,
is a combination of code, program database, and the
hyper-text-markup-language used to program displays on the
Internet's World Wide Web.  If you had the patience and curiosity
to sift through it before firing up SATAN, you found the
program's requirements for normal operation are about 32 megabytes
of computer memory and the power of a Sun/Sparc workstation,
which translated for the techno-groupies at the nation's
newspapers reads: NO TEENAGE HACKERS, AND MOSTLY EVERYBODY ELSE,
INVITED.

None of this stopped anyone from playing themselves as April
Fools, which is perhaps what the clever Farmer intended all along.
The rock 'n' rollin,' groovy-lookin,' computer security whiz-bang
got his Warholian fifteen minutes of fame and then some, was
fired and hired and had his software classified a bona fide "ware,"
guaranteeing everyone in computing creation would want a copy 
even if they couldn't figure out how to use it.  Internet 
software libraries designated as SATAN stores clogged in 
April as everyone scrambled for the program while on-line.  
Those smart enough to be in the driver's seats of commercial services 
which charged for Internet access made a windfall in access time charges.  
Various corporate windbags in the business computing field took 
the opportunity to editorialize, complain and organize silly and 
ineffectual electronic protest multi-mailings to Farmer.  The 
Internet did not crash, as formerly predicted.

This week, the Associated Press ran a follow-up to Farmer and SATAN,  
stating at the end of the piece that "Typical home computer users are 
unlikely to be affected by the program."


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


CRYPT NEWSLETTER WORLD WIDE WEB HOME PAGE

Thanks to Jim Thomas, magnanimous editor of Computer
underground Digest and all around cool guy,
you can now visit Crypt & The Virus Creation Labs on the
World Wide Web, view pics of the author and his book,
download back issues and sample a chapter from VCL!

Set your graphical browser (Mosaic, Netscape, etc.) to:

URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu:80/~crypt
(don't forget the squiggly before the "crypt")

See you there!

--------------------------------------------------------------
American Eagle has just released THE VIRUS CREATION LABS: A
Journey Into the Underground, a new book by Crypt Newsletter
editor George Smith. Smith unravels the intrigue behind
virus writers and their scourges, the anti-virus software
developers and security consultants on the information highway.

What readers are saying about THE VIRUS CREATION LABS:

"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


"I don't doubt that [VIRUS CREATION LABS] is entertaining and 
informative."

                      ----Gene Spafford, academic UNIX security
                      guy

"The eruption of electronic publications and services has
produced some genuinely novel ways to waste time.  Anyone who
has the time to explore the vast resources of the Internet
should probably read 'The Virus Creation Labs' instead.
Cynical, diverting new book . . ."
                     ----Steven Aftergood, the Federation of
                         American Scientists' SECRECY & GOVERNMENT
                         BULLETIN

"I like it!  The writing is witty and informative [and]
does a fine job of keeping the interest of the
'outsider' to the virus scene."
                     ----Nowhere Man, infamous virus writer and
                         programmer of the software virus-maker,
                         the Virus Creation Laboratory kit

-------------------------order form-------------------------

Yes, I want to receive a copy of George Smith's "The Virus
Creation Labs: A Journey Into the Underground"
(ISBN 0-929408-09-8).

   Price: $12.95/copy plus $2.50 shipping per book.

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----------------------------------------------------
George Smith, Ph.D., edits the Crypt Newsletter when he
feels like it and is the author of "The Virus
Creation Labs: A Journey Into the Underground."
Media critic Andy Lopez lives in Columbia, SC,
and is absent-without-leave.  This issue was crunched
by a copy of GNU EMACS, just to see if it could be
done with a minimum of profanity.

copyright 1995 Crypt Newsletter. All rights reserved.