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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@***.NEU.EDU>
Subject: Backups and the Crash of '29
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 10:37:04 -0500
I got to thinking last night, and I realised one very fundamentally
important fact about backups: they're useless if you can't read them. It
really doesn't matter how recent your backups are if you can't use any of
your computers. And the ``virus'' made anything on the net effectively
unusable.

Besdies, there are too many things happening in real time, banks, stock
markets, and the like; glitch them for an hour and the economies of entire
nations can go bye-bye. Redundant systems are great, but if your redundant
systems go out with the mains, forget it. This does assume that they're on
the net in the first place. Banks today they're not, or they're behind
firewalls; by the turn of the millenium most major banks will be connected
to the Internet in some fashion. And I'll bet whoever was clueful enough to
write the ``virus'' capable of what caused the Crash of '29 was clueful
enough to give it the ability to crash through firewalls.

--
Rat <ratinox@***.neu.edu> | Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox |
PGP Public Key: Ask for one today! |
Message no. 2
From: Quicksilver <jhurley1@****.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Backups and the Crash of '29
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 13:54:04 -30000
On Thu, 26 Jan 1995, Stainless Steel Rat wrote:

> I got to thinking last night, and I realised one very fundamentally
> important fact about backups: they're useless if you can't read them. It
> really doesn't matter how recent your backups are if you can't use any of
> your computers. And the ``virus'' made anything on the net effectively
> unusable.
>
> Besdies, there are too many things happening in real time, banks, stock
> markets, and the like; glitch them for an hour and the economies of entire
> nations can go bye-bye. Redundant systems are great, but if your redundant
> systems go out with the mains, forget it. This does assume that they're on
> the net in the first place. Banks today they're not, or they're behind
> firewalls; by the turn of the millenium most major banks will be connected
> to the Internet in some fashion. And I'll bet whoever was clueful enough to
> write the ``virus'' capable of what caused the Crash of '29 was clueful
> enough to give it the ability to crash through firewalls.
>

Ahah. Did any of y'all read _Debt_of_Honor_ by Tom Clancy? Anyway, in
it, someone inserts an easter egg into on of the machines that records
the transactions on the NYSE. The easter egg (trojan horse type virus)
is spread, because the encasulating software is better, more efficient
that the previous version. When triggered, the easter egg allowed
trading to go through the computers as normal, but all of the backup
output was trashed. Tapes, disk records, printed paper, all of it was
gibberized at output. This wrecked the financial community, and almost
killed the US financial stability.

So who's to say that there weren't some (maybe as little as a hundred)
agents-in-place of the unkown X who initiated the virus. These people
just need to foul up the backups. And since most small, many medium, and
even a few large corps don't maintain their own backup site, instead
contracting out their backup to a company that does disaster recovery for
profit, perhaps only a few sites needed to be hit. For Example, assume IBM
maintains a site in upstate New York that is a disaster recovery site for
many of their corp customers. These agents just need to bomb one
location to take out the archives of several corps.....

And so on and so forth. And if these events are not publicized/remarked
upon, most people would think that the Crash was the only thing.

And still, I'm sure people did have partial backups, otherwise the
Shadowrun world would not even be as advanced as it is.

Chavez:"I want to see his eyes when it happens."
Clark:"So use a good scope on the rifle."
Message no. 3
From: Code I Network Admin <Admin@*****.HQ.NASA.GOV>
Subject: Re: Backups and the Crash of '29
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 14:57:00 PST
On Thu, 26 Jan 1995, ratinox@***.neu.edu said:
> I got to thinking last night, and I realised one very fundamentally
> important fact about backups: they're useless if you can't read them. It
> really doesn't matter how recent your backups are if you can't use any of
> your computers. And the ``virus'' made anything on the net effectively
> unusable.
>
> Besdies, there are too many things happening in real time, banks, stock
> markets, and the like; glitch them for an hour and the economies of entire
> nations can go bye-bye. Redundant systems are great, but if your redundant
> systems go out with the mains, forget it. This does assume that they're on
> the net in the first place. Banks today they're not, or they're behind
> firewalls; by the turn of the millenium most major banks will be connected
> to the Internet in some fashion. And I'll bet whoever was clueful enough to
> write the ``virus'' capable of what caused the Crash of '29 was clueful
> enough to give it the ability to crash through firewalls.
>
> --
> Rat <ratinox@***.neu.edu> | Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
> http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox |
> PGP Public Key: Ask for one today! |

Considering virtually all monitary transactions are done electronically, the
banks are definately on-line somewhere.

I just read an alert on people that use a specific TCP/IP packet to spoof
past Routers into systems.

I think I even read something about it in yesterday's Washington Post.

Carl Schelin | My son's taken over, he's quite the bright lad,
NASA HQ | Bringing life to the dead just like his old dad.
Code I | He does things now with computers and lasers,
Washington DC | That I once would perform with straight edged razors.
Message no. 4
From: Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@***.NEU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Backups and the Crash of '29
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 16:04:22 -0500
>>>>> "Code" == Code I Network Admin
<Admin@*****.HQ.NASA.GOV> writes:

Code> Considering virtually all monitary transactions are done
Code> electronically, the banks are definately on-line somewhere.

They're on their own networks, which are distinct from what most of us are
using, just as ATMs are on their own lines. However, this is changing. That
may be a good thing, or it may be a bad thing, depending on how you look at
it.

Code> I just read an alert on people that use a specific TCP/IP packet to
Code> spoof past Routers into systems.

Full details have been posted to comp.security, et.al.

--
Rat <ratinox@***.neu.edu> | Happy Fun Ball contains a liquid core,
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox | which, if exposed due to rupture, should
PGP Public Key: Ask for one today! | not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.

Further Reading

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These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!