Approaching Zero by Paul Mungo (best way to read e books .TXT) 📕

PC culture is reflected by the provenance of viruses.

In Britain, New Scotland Yard’s Computer Crime Unit recently compiled a list of

the country’s most troublesome bugs, which originated in places as diverse as

New Zealand, Taiwan. Italy, Israel (the Jerusalem virus), Austria, Pakistan

(Brain), Switzerland, India, and Spain—as well as a couple from the United

States and even one that is believed to be from China.

 

The increasing links between virus writers in different parts of the world is

demonstrated by the growing number of adaptations of existing viruses. The

Vienna virus, which Ralph Burger had included in his Das grosse

Computerirenbuch spawned a whole series of knockoffs, with slightly differing

payloads and messages. As did the Jerusalem virus: there are now perhaps a

hundred variants, all based on the one prototype. The knockoffs come from all

over the world: Australia, the Netherlands, the republics of the former Soviet

Union, Britain, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Malaysia, Argentina, Spain,

Switzerland, the United States—the list is only slightly shorter than the

membership of the U.N. Some of the new variants are just jokes, and play tunes,

but others are even more destructive than the original.

 

Jerusalem’s most fearsome variant came from Asia. Called Invader, this bug

first appeared in Taiwan in July 1990, where it is presumed to have been

written. Within a month it had swept through the Far East and was reported to

have reached North America. Just four months later it was found at the Canadian

Computer Show, where it was running amok on the PC displays. Invader is an

exceptionally sophisticated variant. It would infect a target computer’s hard

disk, diskettes, and program files, and its payload was devastating: it would

zap data stored on a hard disk or diskette to the sound of an exploding bomb

whenever a particular, quite common, piece of drafting software, called

Autocad, was loaded.

 

Invader is part of the new generation of viruses: destructive, malicious, and

clever. Since 1988, as the number of bugs has grown exponentially, virus

techniques have improved dramatically, and their infection strategies have

become more effective, which means they have a better chance of traveling. They

exploit obscure functions of computers in order to evade detection; they can

trash data; and in some cases, they can zero out large-scale computer networks.

 

While the early viruses could cause damage, it was generally by accident; the

new strains are programmed to be destructive. Some seem demonic and frenzied,

as if the virus writer was driven by a personal animus.

 

On January 15, 1991, the principal bank on the Mediterranean island of Malta

was attacked by a particularly vicious bug. The first warning of the virus was

an announcement that popped up suddenly on the computer screen:

 

DISK DESTROYER—A SOUVENIR OF MALTA I HAVE JUST DESTROYED THE FAT ON YOUR

DISK!!

 

HOWEVER, I HAVE KEPT A COPY IN RAM, AND IM GIVING YOU

 

A LAST CHANCE TO RESTORE YOUR PRECIOUS DATA.

 

WARNING: IF YOU RESET NOW ALL YOUR DATA

WILL BE LOST FOREVER!!

YOUR DATA DEPENDS ON A GAME OF JACKPOT

CASINO DE MALTE JACKPOT

+L+~+?+ ~+c+

 

CREDITS: 5

ANY KEY TO PLAY

The virus was, in essence, inviting operators to gamble with the data on their

hard disks. It had captured the FAT, the File Allocation Table which, despite

its unprepossessing name, is one of the most important components of a

computer’s hard disk: it is a master index that keeps track of where all the

pages for each file are kept. On a hard disk, unlike in a filing cabinet, pages

of a single file are not necessarily stored together; they are stored wherever

there happens to be disk space, which often results in “fragmentation”—

particularly of larger files. Whenever a user selects a particular file, the

FAT is responsible for finding all of the file’s parts and assembling them in

the correct order. Once corrupted, the FAT takes on all the attributes of an

unqualified temporary secretary: it can’t find anything, it loses files, and

the ones it doesn’t lose are incomplete or presented in the wrong order.

 

The gamble the operators faced was more or less the same as on a slot machine—

except that the computer user was playing with data instead of a coin. If he

played and lost, the virus would zap the FAT, with disastrous consequences. If

he played and won, the virus would replace the FAT it had captured with the

copy it had sequestered in the RAM, or random access memory, the computer’s

principal memory, and the area where programs are run.

 

When the user followed the on-screen instructions and pressed a key, the

characters in the three “windows” ran through a sequence, like a real slot

machine. The operator had five “credits,” or tries, and the game ended when

three Ls, Cs, or .~s came up. The operator could try again if a combination of

characters came up. The jackpot was three Ls. Then the operator would see the

following message on his screen: BASTARD! YOURE LUCKY THIS TIME, BUT FOR YOUR

OWN SAKE, SWITCH OFF YOUR COMPUTER NOW AND DONT TURN IT ON UNTIL TOMORROW!

Three .~s was a loser: the virus would then announce NO FUCKING CHANCE and

destroy the FAT. Three Cs, unsportingly, was also a loser: the message was:

 

HA HA! YOU ASSHOLE, YOUVE LOST: SAY BYE TO YOUR BALLS. Once again, the FAT

would be zapped.

 

The Maltese bank had no choice but to gamble. Once the virus had seized control

of the FAT, there was no possible way of retrieving it other than by coming up

with a jackpot, and the odds against that were three to one. The computer

operators pressed their keys, losing two games to every one they won and having

to rebuild the system and restore the damaged files on two thirds of their

infected computers. They also had to track down and destroy the virus, which

became known as Casino, on all of their machines, a process that required the

help of a computer security expert from Britain.

 

From the spelling and the use of American expressions such as asshole, it was

thought that the author of Casino was American, or perhaps a Maltese who had

previously lived in the States. But, as in so many cases, his identity was

never discovered.

 

Casino epitomized many of the characteristics of the new breed

of viruses: it was vicious, destructive, and its payload was curiously

spiteful. To date, the virus hasn’t spread from its island home, though that

doesn’t mean that it won’t travel in the future.

 

It is estimated that a virus that is going to travel will reach its peak

propagation within eighteen months. (Casino is thought to have been written

just a few weeks before it hit the bank.) About half of the viruses ever

written are less than six months old: they are, in a manner of speaking, now

waiting for their travel documents, for that odd confluence of luck and

circumstance that will unleash them throughout the world.

 

As the world population of computer viruses grows exponentially, so does the

potential for real disaster. Viruses will affect computer users first, but

then, indirectly, many people who have never even touched a computer will be

affected. A virus let loose in a hospital computer could harm vital records and

might result in patients receiving the wrong dosages of medicine; workers could

suffer job losses in virus-ravaged businesses; dangerous emissions could be

released from nuclear power plants if the controlling computers were

compromised; and so on. Even military operations could be affected. Already,

during the 1991 Gulf conflict, Allied forces had to contend with at least two

separate virus assaults affecting over seven thousand computers. One of the

incidents was caused by the ubiquitous Jerusalem bug, the other by a “fun”

virus from New Zealand called Stoned, which displayed the message YOUR PC IS

NOW STONED on the screen. The two outbreaks were enough to cause computer

shutdowns and the loss of data. The consequences for the military, now utterly

dependent on computers, of an attack by one of the newer, more destructive

viruses—perhaps one unleashed by the enemy—could be catastrophic.

 

In truth, there has been no major disaster, no loss of life or jobs due to a

virus. The only losses to date have been financial. But hospitals have already

found viruses lurking in their systems; the military has been affected; and a

Russian nuclear power plant’s central computer was once shut down because of a

virus. None of the bugs were destructive, but it is probably only a matter of

time before there is a real catastrophe.

 

It is now believed by many that the real threat from computer viruses will

escalate in the mid-nineties when a new generation of bugs begins to spread

throughout the industrialized countries of the West. The new viruses will

attack from every corner of the world, but the biggest threat will come from

one country—Bulgaria.

 

The first call came in to the Help Desk of a California magazme publisher just

after five P.M. on Thursday, June 27, 1991.3 The company has 1,500 interlinked

computers spread around three buildings. The Help Desk, part of the

technical-support department, works as a sort of troubleshooter for the entire

networked system, dealing with routine problems and helping the less computer-literate staff with their hassles.

 

“My computer has started making a noise,” said the caller.

 

In the normal run of events, noises, apart from the standard beep when starting

up or the low-pitched whir of the machine’s cooling system, are not part of a

computer’s standard repertoire. A noise usually suggests a problem—a

high-pitched whine can be a warning that the computer’s monitor is faulty; a

loud hum can signal a difficulty with the hard disk.

 

“What sort of noise?” asked the girl at the Help Desk.

 

“I don’t know, it’s just a noise. I’ve switched it off. Can someone come over?”

 

Seconds later the Help Desk received a call from another user with the same

problem. Then the switchboard lit up. There were callers from all over the

company, all with the same complaint: their computers were making odd noises.

It may be a tune, one of the callers added helpfully, coming from the

computer’s small internal speaker. The sixth caller recognized the melody. The

computers were all playing tinny renditions of “Yankee Doodle.”

 

To the specialists in the technical-support department, the discovery that the

tune was “Yankee Doodle” was confirmation that

they had been hit by a virus, and a well-known one at that. The Yankee Doodle

virus had first been seen in 1989 and was said to be relatively harmless. There

are a number of variants of the bug but most simply cause computers to play

“Yankee Doodle.” This particular variant, known as Version 44, played the tune

at five P.M. every eight days.

 

The company arranged for antiviral software to be shipped overnight by Federal

Express. The publishers of the software assured the Help Desk that they would

simply need to run the program on the computers to locate the infected files

and kill the virus; the files wouldn’t be damaged and no data would be lost.

Yankee Doodle was a nuisance, they said, but not a major problem.

 

On Friday morning the technical-support staff began the timeconsuming task of

checking every computer in the company. They discovered that eighteen of their

machines had been hit by the virus and that the killer function of the software

they had just bought wouldn’t work on their particular variant of Yankee Doodle. Instead, to clean the bug out, they would need to delete all infected

files and replace them.

 

The virus they were fighting is generally transferred by diskette. It attaches

itself to an executable file—a word-processing program or a game,