In the News Brought to you by Horny Toad I decided to continue the "In the News" section of the Codebreakers zine, but with a slight twist. I am going to try and include numerous bits of interesting virus and hacking news from around the world to keep you informed of the current virus and AV situation. 1. Masterspy Hacker? A masterspy believed by the Pentagon to be the number one threat to US security and deadlier than the KGB turned out to be a British schoolboy hacker working out of his bedroom. US military chiefs feared that an East European spy ring had gained access to their innermost intelligence secrets and hacked into American Air Defense systems. In actuality, this "spy ring" was none other than 16 year old Londoner Richard Pryce. Pryce, aka "The Datastream Cowboy" was fined $1915 by a London Court for committing "War Games" style crimes. Pryce downloaded dozens of secret files, including details of the research and developement of ballistic missiles. He successfully broke into US "secure" systems 200 times. Using a $1200 computer, he broke into computers at US Air Force Bases and even Lockheed systems. "Those places were a lot easier to get into than university computers in England", Pryce told reporters. "It was more of a challenge really, going somewhere I wasn't meant to. If you set out to go somewhere and you get there, other hackers would be impressed." Pryce got a "D" on his computer course exam. 2. Swedish Hackers Caught Two young Swedish hackers who turned a Swedish county's home page into an advertisement for pornography and cannabis and broke into the US space agency's computer system have been found. After a year-long hunt, police in Umea in northern Sweden finally traced the two youths, aged 18 and 15, and seized their computers, the newspaper Vasterbottens Folkblad said today. No charges will be filed due to the fact that no economic crime was committed. 3. Elton John Virus There is a virus that is spreading its way across Spain. The virus prints the first two verses of Elton John's tribute song to Princess Diana, Candle in the Wind '97. A Spanish AV dude is quoted as saying that this is one of the worlds few nice viruses because it doesn't break or destroy anything. 4. A German Bank is after you The Bayerische Vereinsbank in Germany has offered a 10000 mark reward to catch a hacker who was threatening to divulge it's clients bank codes. The hacker has demanded that the bank pay him 500000 marks or he will disclose confidential data on the banks clients. Bild daily published a page-one photo of the hacker, showing a man believed to be between 25 and 35, wearing round glasses. Viel Gluck! 5. Words from Sarah Gordon Most people think that the typical virus writer is an evil, depraved technopathic genius gone mad, a sociopath. But the ones that Sarah has come across have seemed like a nice, normal lot. (She obviously talked to the Codebreakers!) Virus writing may not be illegal, but it is certainly anti-social. Sarah wanted to find out what ethics motivates people to write viruses, what is the attraction? What she found was that, apart from writing viruses, there was nothing very unethical about virus writers. In one study she interviewed a sample of 60 virus writers and compared them with a model of ethical development formulated by the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. They were mostly "within the ethical norms for their ages." There was no such thing, she also discovered, as a typical virus writer, although they did fall into categories - the adolescent, the student and the professional adult. They were almost exclusively male. They tended to be young, from middle-class homes and with a keen sense of right and wrong. They were respectful of authority - not the angry, antisocial teenagers you might expect. "Justifications vary from 'we can do this because we can' to 'we do this because someone said we were not capable of doing it'," says Gordon. Most said it was something they just did and that they had never considered why. "The impact of there actions is often seen, at least by them, as impacting machines, not other human beings." This shouldn't come as a surprise, she says. The impersonal, dehumanised world of "electronic communities" is bound to make some people behave differently. Anonymity, it has been shown, often prompts people to behave in ways they wouldn't in the "physical world." Adult Virus writers tend to be more immature for their "ethical development" age groups, and more likely to have chips on their shoulders. They spoke of hatred of hypocrisy and politicians, and saw themselves as fighting an "enemy", mostly defined as "Society." Some saw virus writing as a right - a form of free speech. Most of them said that they were battling against the "AV people" - anti-virus experts, like Gordon. Fame was a common motive - getting a virus discussed in the news groups or written about in the press was a major coup. The highest accolade was for a virus to become so widespread that a scanning product to detect it was put on the market. One of Gordon's aims in doing this research, which she continues to update, is to demystify people's perceptions about virus writing. "The 'art' of writing viruses is vastly overrated by the virus writers," she says. "It is pretty simple to write a virus, and real talent could be better shown by making useful software." There are only 300 viruses currently circulating, although over 17000 have been identified in the past. Gordon has interviewed some of the more sophisticated virus writers - underworld celebrities spoken of in hushed, admiring tones by their younger counterparts. When she published an interview with one, an aggressive Bulgarian known as "Dark Avenger", she was dubbed the Clarice Starling of the virus world. He was Hannibal Lecter, and the interview does indeed read like something from Silence of the Lambs: after she made her first attempt to contact him, via a bulletin board, his spooky response was to dedicate his latest virus to her. "Why didn't you contact me directly?" he asks in the interview. "I was afraid of you," she replies. "You should see a doctor," he says. "Normal women don't spend their time talking about computer viruses." 6. New Virus Strain Reeking Havoc Reports are emerging all over Europe about the spreading of a new strain of the Elvira virus. The Elvira virus was originally written by Spanska. In his original version, there were no destructive routines. Unfortunately, someone must have altered his original code and added a routine to erase the hard drive. Both versions of the Elvira virus are encrypted and polymorphic. They also both display a version of the text below. Elvira! Black and White Girl From Paris. You make me feel alive. If infected with the new strain of the Elvira virus, once the message is displayed, the virus will then begin erasing you hard drive. Unfortunately, when you publish source code, it can be abused by simply changing the payload routines. The Elvira virus hasn't made it to the wild list, but it is well on its way. This new strain of the Elvira virus was found by Panda Software. A spokesman from Norton also confirms that they have many different strains of the Elvira virus. 7. Peace Virus Well, all over France the "Peace" virus is making itself known. This virus infects Microsoft Excel documents by inserting itself into a formula on an Excel spreadsheet. It sounds like a fun virus, its payload isn't really destructive, rather, annoying to the Excel user. The virus hides the toolbar, inserts tabs in the document, and then attempts to save spreadsheets with the name "En fin la paix" - Peace at last. I guess the big fuss is that if you have multiple spreadsheets open at the same time, each will try to save as the same name. What a bummer. Whoever the author is, send me the code and virus description and you'll have an article in the Codebreakers Zine! 8. Russian Hacker Caught The first criminal case against a hacker in Russia took place over a month ago. The dude was a commercial college student. He got probation for 3 years and had to pay 2800 dollars in fines. That doesn't seem like much, but I guess in Russia, its quite a bit these days. Apparently the hacker copied a load of confidential commercial information, but the authorities did not have any proof that he had sold anything, hence the reduced sentence. 9. Citibank hacked I'm sure that you have all heard about Vladimir Leonidovich Levin. He is the dude that hacked Citibank and transferred over 3.7 million dollars to unnamed accounts. This 30 year old hacker from St Petersburg is facing 5 years in jail and fines of at least 250,000 dollars. Levin was able to hack into Citibank and manipulate a special bank program to transfer the cash. I saw an interview with Levin on TV and this guy is great. The authorities have pinned Levin to Russian mafia ties. Actually, what in Russia is not affected by the mafia? Anyway, Levin used some simple techniques that he found on a hacking site to gain access to the Citibank "secure" server. Damn, I was thinking Mitnick the whole time I listened to this guys interview. Levin, nu, davayte delat interview somnoi!