Interview with Black Jack ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ U> Tell me a little about yourself as a person, hobbies-music etc? B> I'm a 19 year old male from Austria. My main hobby (or better passion, meaning of life or whatever) is science; right now I'm on my way to make it to my job by studying physics at the university of Vienna. Other hobbies of mine are literature (my favourite authors are Umberto Eco, Patrick Suesskind, Markus Werner and George Orwell, to mention just a few) and music - I like lots of different styles of music, as long as it is not cheap shit only produced to make loads of money. Right now I listen to German pop-rock from Hamburg a lot (Kante, Tocotronic, Die Sterne, Tomte, to mention just a few groups), but I also love classical rock from the 60's, disco music from the 70's, synthpop from the 80's, and much more. And of course virus/assembler coding is also a big hobby for me, and I guess this is the reason for this interview ;-) U> Where you get your handle? B> When I wrote my very first viruses, I told a friend about it, and I also said that I needed a nickname for my viruses now. And he said "Why don't you name yourself Black Jack?". He actually had ment it as a joke, but I had no better idea, so I stuck with it. Obviously, my nick has no special meaning; I don't even like it very much. U> Do your family/friends know about your virus activities? What do they think about it? Do you care of their opinion? B> Some of my very best friends know. My family doesn't; they wouldn't understand. U> How did you start out in computers? B> I got my first PC (a wounderful 486 with 4 MB ram and a 500 MB HDD) from my parents for christmas '94. Quite soon after that, I already started to learn QBASIC, and a bit later also true languages like Pascal, and then finally (I guess that was somewhen in Summer 1995) Assembler and C/C++. U> What was your first virus? B> When I started with asm, I wrote a few very basic DOS viruses, but never released them. When I got into the scene later in 1999, my first released virus was Prah, a pretty simple DOS virus. U> How did you start out in the virus scene? B> I actually was always fascinated by computer viruses, even long time before I had my own PC. Then, when I was learning asm, it was a natural step to try to write viruses too. But I had no internet access back in 1995, so I had nothing to learn from, except for some AV documents (I had found VSUM on some shareware CD), so I got soon bored of it again. I then restarted in 1999, when I got internet access in my school, and this renewed my fascination for viruses. U> Which programming languages do you use? B> For viruses I only use asm, nowadays almost exclusively for Win32; for legit applications I mainly use C/C++, occasionally also Turbo Pascal or Delphi, and sometimes I have to code some Fortran for university. U> Where do you live and how is the situation of the virus scene in your land? B> Here in Austria there is almost no VX scene. I am the only active Win32asm virus coder :-/ Some time ago SPo0ky, leader of the now disbanded codebreakers, wrote also some nice Win32 viruses; Probably not many people know that Win32.lhsix, the first virus that used the retro technique of blocking AV websites, was written by him. Besides that, there are/were some macro coders, the most important is jackie twoflowers, one of the best macro coders ever. U> How many and which viriis did you write? Which do u like best? why? B> In my beginner times, I released about 9 simple viruses for DOS, but they are not really worth talking about anymore now. For Win32, I have finished 6 ones yet, but several more are "in the lab", some almost finished, some only a concept based on some code snippets (I like towork on several projects simultaneously). I like the newer ones best, of course (Win9x.Etymo, Win9x.Yildiz, Win32.Demiurg, Win9x.Kante, Win32.Ikarus, all memory resident Windows viruses), because each virus is a learning experience for me, so each new virus is more advanced than my older ones. U> How do you name your viriis? B> Most times just something that comes to my mind while coding, sometimes a funny-sounding nonsense word, sometimes the name has also something to do with the way the virus works (like my old DOS virus trinity, that infected three filetypes in three different ways). Usually I don't think too much about the names, though. U> How do you spread your viriis? B> I never spread my viruses, since I don't want some computer user to be damaged because of my work. I just release them in VX magazines and on my website. U> Do you prefer a specific type of viriis? Which virus(es) do you like best? B> Obviously, I prefer Assembler viruses, especially for the modern 32bit OSes (Well, I only code for Win32 now, but of course Linux and OS/2 virii are cool too). And multiplatform-infectors are even cooler, of course ;-) U> What E-zine you most of all like? B> I like most the recent zines that focus on Win32asm coding: 29a, Xine, Matrix, Vx-tasy, DDT and *-zine. U> Which AV product do you like best and why? Which do you piss off most? B> AVP, F-prot and DrWeb are quality products. The ones that spend more time with advertisement than with improving their software (McAfee, Norton) suck. U> What VX technique are you most interested in? B> I am most interested in the replication techniques itself, thats why I like most to try out different ways of infection, different ways of going memory resident and new target file formats. I also like multi-platform viruses very much because of that. U> What viruswriters you most of all respect? B> I respect everyone why writes original viruses. I won't bore you now by giving a list of the VX-gods, because everybody knows those nicks anyways. U> What do you think about virii genenerators? B> They're a big challenge to create. They can be also fun to play with. But people who use a virus generator and clame they have written a virus are lame, of course. U> Are there things or people you dislike within the VX ? B> What I dislike very much in the VX scene is that there are so much childish fights within the scene nowadays. About people, I dislike most the newbies that appear again and again in VX forums and ask stupid questions, instead of researching a bit themselves, fortunately they usually disappear again very soon. I also dislike that "virus authors" that idle in IRC all the time, but never release any virus. U> What do you think about macro and script viruses? B> They are way to easy to write and seem pretty uninteresting to may. Almost all are very unoriginal and show nothing new or any coding skills. Actually, I would appreaciate it if one day Microsoft would stop all those VB viruses by simply removing the unnecessary macro and script languages out of their products. U> What do you think about poly engines? Which do you like best? B> The poly engine is the most personal, but also the most difficult to write part of the virus. Of course the more complex the poly engine is, the better; I am really impressed by those mega-engines that consist of several thousand lines of assembler code, like those by GriYo, Prizzy or the Menthal Driller; just open some 29a zine to see what I mean ;-) U> What do you think about destructive viruses? B> I don't like them, because I want to create and not to destroy. I simply don't want to damage anyone with my work, that's why I never code destructive payloads or spread my viruses. Most of my viruses carry no payload at all, by the way. U> What are generally your goals in the virus writing context? B> To write viruses that are as cool as I can make them, and to learn and have fun while doing that. U> What happened with Lz0 team? B> Well, I already told my view of the whole story in my quitting article in Lz0#2. In short, the group simply fanished because almost all members simply disappeared, and then some internal conflicts between the few remaining members (mainly between jackie and me) did the rest to end the group. Btw, this is all about the VX team only, the cracking division is still active, I think. Some month ago Jackie also tried to to recreate the VX team by rejoining, but it seems this attempt failed too, since there was no visible group activity. U> What do you think about the current VX scene worldwide? B> Right now it seems to be a very quiet phase. There are only very few VX oriented sites left after the end of coderz.net and shadowvx.com, and also very few zines were released (if I remember right, the only really cool zine in the last half year was 29a#5). Hopefully Xine#5 and Matrix#3 will be released soon and rock the VX world. U> Do you do other computer stuff outside VX (hacking, phreaking, warez etc.)? B> I only did some basic DOS cracking once, but that is already ages ago. U> How would you consider the perfect virus? B> No idea. Actually I don't think there will ever be a perfect virus. U> Your plans in the future as coder and in general? B> As a coder, I want to improve my skills further and release some more viruses. In real life, I want to be as successfull as possible at university. U> Where can you be reached ? B> Visit my website at http://blackjackvx.cjb.net . You can also mail me at Black_Jack_VX@hotmail.com U> Any greetz? B> Greetings to all the cool souls in the VX scene; you know who you are. U> Any final word? B> Thanks for the chance to introdce myself better with this interview.