Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Vincent.Pellerin@***.gmc.ulaval.ca (Vincent Pellerin)
Subject: Re: new virus..NOT SR material but important (GOOD TIMES "AGAIN")
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 96 04:01:49 AST
Neon Sihn wrote ...
>>
>>It has been passed to me by a friend on the internet about
>>a serious computer virus that is circulating. I don't want
>>to alarm anyone, just to make you aware!!
>>
>>>
>>> WARNING!!!!!!! INTERNET VIRUS

<snip snip>
>
> anyone noticed this elsewhere???


I'm afraid that it is a rather old warning, the "Good times" virus
warning passed this list about a year ago. The people that actually know
something about computer told us that it is impossible to get a virus from
e-mail (unless you send a program or executable). For myself i know near to
nothing about computer so i can't confirm or differ.

_________________________________________________________________________
| _____ |
| \ \ / Don't steal,... |
| \ __/ / ...the government hates the competition |
| \ / |
| \_/ Vincent.Pellerin@***.gmc.ulaval.ca |
|________________________________________________________________________|
Message no. 2
From: westec@******.COM (Neon Sihn)
Subject: Re: new virus..NOT SR material but important (GOOD TIMES "AGAIN")
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 09:56:14 -0600
>>>> WARNING!!!!!!! INTERNET VIRUS
>
>
> I'm afraid that it is a rather old warning, the "Good times" virus
>warning passed this list about a year ago. The people that actually know
>something about computer told us that it is impossible to get a virus from
>e-mail (unless you send a program or executable). For myself i know near to
>nothing about computer so i can't confirm or differ.
>


well that's comforting anywayz, I haven't been on Internet all that
long so that was before my time.




---------construction in progress-------------------
westec@******.com
TIP #1323 IPPA #A-0117 Lively #F188
---------construction in progress-------------------
Message no. 3
From: James Meiers <polbdm@***.unm.EDU>
Subject: Re: new virus..NOT SR material but important (GOOD TIMES "AGAIN")
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 00:11:31 -0700 (MST)
Does it really seem possible that anyone on AOL could make any type of
virus, let alone this Superevil-killer-unstoppable-virus.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the
courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to hide the bodies
of the people I had to kill because they pissed me off."
-Unknown (but certainly correct)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message no. 4
From: "A Halliwell" <u5a77@**.keele.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: new virus..NOT SR material but important (GOOD TIMES "AGAIN")
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:54:55 +0000 (GMT)
|
|Does it really seem possible that anyone on AOL could make any type of
|virus, let alone this Superevil-killer-unstoppable-virus.

All this prejudice against AOLers...
The fact that 90% of them might have an I.Q. of a molusc, doesn't mean all
of them do.
You forget that AOL offers 10 free hours. If that's not an incentive.....

The virus is impossible, mainly because you can't transfer executable code
in that way and also because there are so many systems out there.
You can't make executable code written on a x86 series processor to run on a
680xx processor for example.
All the Op-Codes are different.
--
______________________________________________________________________________
| |What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crackin |
|u5a77@**.keele.ac.uk |the ground beneath a giant bolder, which you can't |
| |move, with no hope of rescue. |
|Andrew Halliwell |Consider how lucky you are that life has been good |
|Principal in:- |to you so far... |
|Comp Sci & Visual Arts | -The BOOK, Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message no. 5
From: t_little@**********.utas.edu.au (Timothy Little)
Subject: Re: new virus..NOT SR material but important (GOOD TIMES "AGAIN")
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 23:01:08 +1100
>The virus is impossible, mainly because you can't transfer executable code
>in that way

In some types of systems, such a virus becomes possible. About a year ago I
constructed a simple virus that uses autoexecuting macros to propogate.
When I started working in a business environment a few months later I
realised that it could also automatically mail itself to other users on the
LAN. For obvious reasons, I didn't actually do so.

So for documents in later versions of at least Word and Excel for Windows,
such a method of infection *is* possible. Think of it as a 'high-level' virus.


>and also because there are so many systems out there.
>You can't make executable code written on a x86 series processor to run on a
>680xx processor for example.
>All the Op-Codes are different.

I've also done this, writing code fragments that run on both 68000 (my Amiga
system) and on 80x86 (my PC). The first few bytes are opcodes that are
harmless garbage on a x86, but cause a 68000 to jump to its correct machine
code. The subsequent instructions are the x86 version of the code. Scaling
up to about 6 processors shouldn't be too hard, but for much more than that
you would find it difficult to keep the run-in sequence harmless on all
processors.

I have also written a sequence in 7-bit ASCII that decodes and runs a
following uuencoded program. To use a uuencoded program, you can just strip
off the mail headers and run it. It is certainly not very robust - lacking
nulls really hurts - but such coding can be done.

(Completely off the topic now, a program can be constructed on the Amiga
that displays a multi-way scrolling picture below ripple-scrolling text and
in time to music, that runs even with the CPU physically removed from the
machine 8-)


Back to the topic:
The difficulty is not in the opcode differences, but in the 'framework' that
instructs the OS how to run the code. The OS tends to be a lot less
forgiving than the CPU. For example, the Amiga requires programs to consist
of 'hunks', the header of which starts with 0x00 00 03 F3. Violations of
these (usually fairly strict) conditions causes a failure of the code to
run, or to cause strange (and obvious) errors.

There are a number of such "impossibilities" that are merely quite difficult.


ObShadowrun: My theory on why Echo Mirage showed that "no existing computer
security could even slow down someone using a cyberterminal": It's Magic.
Seriously. This would also explain why magicians of a 'traditional' mindset
find it vitually impossible to use the Matrix - the Matrix essentially has a
very high aspected background count from the deckers that conduct their
essentially magical operations all the time, everywhere, with enchanced
emotional feedback and powerful symbolism.

Hey, call me insane if you want, but *I* like it!


--
Tim Little
Message no. 6
From: Robert Watkins <robertdw@*******.com.au>
Subject: Re: new virus..NOT SR material but important (GOOD TIMES "AGAIN
Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 17:08:13 +1100 (EST)
>The virus is impossible, mainly because you can't transfer executable code
>in that way and also because there are so many systems out there.
>You can't make executable code written on a x86 series processor to run on a
>680xx processor for example.
>All the Op-Codes are different.

Such a virus _could_ be written if platform-independent code was around.
Gee, what was that announcement Sun Microsystems made a while back?
(Java, in case you missed it, is a byte-indepdent language, which permits
binaries to be run on multiple systems without recompilation given the
presence of a local interpreter. Think of it as a virtual machine).

FWIW, this is the direction the computing world is heading towards in a
fairly major way, and is what allows the Great Crash of '29 (gee, wonder
why they picked THAT date) to be possible.


--
_______________________________________________________________________
/ \
| "As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it |
| wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging |
| had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I |
| realizedthat a large part of my life from then on was going to be |
| spent infinding mistakes in my own programs." -- Maurice Wilkes |
| Robert Watkins robertdw@*******.com.au |
\_______________________________________________________________________/

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about new virus..NOT SR material but important (GOOD TIMES "AGAIN"), you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

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!