Terminal Compromise Part 129

Chapter 26

Midnight, Tuesday, January 19 Scarsdale, New York

Scott Mason awaited Kirk's midnight call.

Now that they had a deal, a win-win situation, Kirk and his phriends had become gung-ho. Kirk agreed to help Scott in the dGraph and Freedom situations if Scott would make sure that his articles clearly spelled out the difference between the white-hat and black-hat hackers.

Journalistic responsibility demanded fair treatment of all sides and their respective opinions, and Scott attempted to bring objectivity to his a.n.a.lyses. He did this well, quite well, and still was able to include his own views and biases, as long as they were properly qualified and disclaimed.

Additionally, Kirk wanted a.s.surances of total anonymity and that Scott would not attempt to identify his location or name. Scott also had to agree to keep his Federal friends at a distance and announce if they were privy to the conversations.

In exchange for fair portrayals in the press, privacy and no government intervention, Kirk promised Scott that the resources of Nemo would be focussed on finding defenses to the virus at- tacks in dGraph and Freedom software. If Kirk and h.o.m.osoto were right, millions of computers would experience the electronic equivalent of sudden cardiac arrest in less than two weeks.

The Times, Higgins and Doug agreed to the relations.h.i.+p but added their own working caveats. In order to treat Kirk as a protected source, they pretended he was a personal contact. Instead of reporter's notes, Scott maintained an open file which recorded the entirety of their computer conversations. There were no precedents for real-time electronic note taking, but Higgins felt confident that the records would protect the paper in any event.

Besides, Supreme Court rulings now permit the recording of con- versations by hidden devices, as long as the person taping is actually present. Again, Higgins felt he had solid position, but he did ask Scott to ask Kirk's permission to save the conversa- tions on disk. Kirk always agreed.

At midnight, Scott's computer beeped the antic.i.p.ated beep.

WTFO

I heard a good one.

JOKE?

Yeah, do they work over computer?

TRY ME.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were in Europe and got to meet the Pope. Dopey really wanted to asked the Pope a few questions. "Mr. Pope, Mr. Pope. Do you have pretty nuns?"

"Of course we do, Dopey." "Mr. Pope, do you have fat ugly nuns?"

"Why, yes, Dopey, we do." "And I bet, Mr. Pope, that you have some tall skinny nuns, too." "Yes, Dopey we do." "Mr. Pope? Do you have nuns in Chicago?" "Yes, Dopey, we have nuns in Chicago?" "And in San Francisco and New York?" "Yes, Dopey."

"And do you have nuns in Africa and Australia and in France?"

"Yes, Dopey. We have nuns everywhere." Dopey took a second to think and finally asked, "Mr. Pope? Do you have nuns in Antarc- tica?" "No, Dopey, I'm sorry, we don't have any nuns in Antarc- tica." The other six dwarfs immediately broke out into a laugh- ing song: "Dopey f.u.c.ked a penguin. Dopey f.u.c.ked a penguin."

HA HA HA HA HA!!! LOVE IT. REAL ICE BREAKER. HA HA.

Facetious?

NO, THAT'S GREAT. IS YOUR RECORDER ON?

You bet. No plagiarism. What have you got?

MORE THAN I WISH I DID. DGRAPH FIRST. WE HAVE IDENTIFIED 54 SEPARATE DGRAPH VIRUSES. I HAVE A FILE FOR YOU. IT LISTS THE VIRUS BY DETONATION DATE AND TYPE, SYMPTOMS AND THE SIGNATURES NEEDED FOR REMOVAL. ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO PRINT IT ALL?

Daily. Our science section has been expanded to every day from just Tuesday. I have all the room I need.

YOU MIGHT MAKE ME RECONSIDER MY OPINION OF THE MEDIA.

Just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts.

HA HA. WE'VE JUST TOUCHED THE SURFACE ON FREEDOM, BUT THE WORD'S OUT. FREEDOM WILL BE AS GOOD AS DEAD IN DAYS. THE NUMBER OF VIRUSES MUST NUMBER IN THE HUNDREDS. IT'S INCREDIBLE. I'VE SEEN A LOT OF VIRUSES, BUT NONE LIKE THIS. IT'S ALMOST AS THOUGH THEY WERE BUILT ON AN a.s.sEMBLY LINE. SOME ARE REAL CLOSE TO EACH OTHER, EVEN DO THE SAME THINGS, BUT THEIR SIGNATURES ARE DIFFER- ENT MAKING IT EXTRA HARD TO DETECT THEM. EACH ONE WILL HAVE TO BE DONE INDIVIDUALLY.

I suggest we start with the dGraph viruses. You said 54, right?

SO FAR.

Send me the file and I still may have time to get it into tomor- row's paper. They usually leave a little room.

I'LL SEND DGVIRUS.RPT. IT'S IN ASCII FORMAT, EASY TO READ INTO ANY FILE YOU'RE WORKING WITH.

I think I can handle it.

DGRAPH VIRUS LIST by Scott Mason

The dGraph Virus Crisis has set the computer industry into a virtual tailspin with far reaching effects including stock prices, delayed purchasing, contract cancellation and a bevy of reported lawsuits in the making.

All the same, the effects of the Crisis must be mitigated, and the New York City Times will be providing daily information to a.s.sist our readers in fighting the viruses. DGraph is now known to contain at least 54 different viruses, each designed to exe- cute different forms of damage to your computer.

According to computer security experts there are two ways to deal with the present virus crisis. The best way to make sure that an active security system is in place in your computer. Recommenda- tions vary, but it is generally agreed by most experts that security, especially in the highly susceptible desktop and laptop personal computers, should be hardware based. Security in soft- ware is viewed to be ineffective against well designed viruses or other offensive software mechanisms.

The second way to combat the effects of the dGraph Virus, but certainly not as effective, is to build a library of virus signa- tures and search all of your computers for matches that would indicate a viral infection. This technique is minimally effec- tive for many reasons: Mutating viruses cause the signature to change every time it infects another program, rendering the virus unidentifiable. There is no way to be sure that all strains have been identified. Plus, there is no defense against subsequent viral attacks, requiring defensive measures to be reinst.i.tuted every time.

Preliminary predictions by computer software experts are that between 1 and 5 million IBM compatible computers will be severely effected by the dGraph Viruses. Computers tied to local area and wide area networks are likely to be hit hardest.

Beginning today, we will publish the known dGraph Virus charac- teristics daily to help disseminate the defensive information as rapidly as possible.

dGraph Version 3.0

Virus #1 Detonation Date: 2/2/XX Symptoms: Monitor blinks on an off, dims and gets bright.

Size: 2413 Signature: 0F 34 E4 DD 81 A1 C3 34 34 34

Virus #2, #3, #4, #5 Same as above but different dates.

2/3/XX, 2/4/XX, 2/5/XX, 2/6/XX

Virus #6 Detonation Date: 2/2/XX Symptoms: Erases hard disk.

Size: 1908 Signature: E4 EE 56 01 01 C1 C1 00 01 02

Virus #7 Detonation Date: 1/22/XX Symptoms: Reformats hard drive.

Size: 2324 Signature: 00 F1 8E E3 AA 01 F5 6B 0B 0D

Virus #8 Detonation Date: 1/23/XX Symptoms: Over exercises hard disk heads causing failure.

Requires hard disk to be replaced.

Size: 2876 Signature: FF 45 7A 20 96 E6 22 1F 07 0F 2E