The Press!
    +--------+

    This crap article was found on page 60 of the October edition of
    Australian PC User.

    All comments enclosed in [square brackets] are by me!  (qark)
      
   
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    Made in Australia...


    Australia's contribution to the pantheon of computer viruses has been
    relatively modest, according to local developers of anti-virus products.
    [They musn't know their shit.  Daemon, lemmings and 1984 are superb
    viruses!]  There have been a couple of well-publicised viruses that
    were locally produced but their fame has been short lived.  [He means
    when X-Fungus got SunCorp and when Dudley infected OTC (Australia's
    telephone link to the world :)]

    Dudley, Gingerbread Man, No Frills and Nuke [1984 they mean] are some
    of the names that have come and gone.  All were fairly ordinary in terms 
    of the way they went about their malicious work.  [Bullshit!  I bet these 
    fuckers they consulted don't even have a clue how 1984 works!  It's
    fucking tricky!]  Aryeh Goretsky, technical manager of McAfee Associates
    in the US, said that he had not heard much in the way of viruses from
    Australia recently.  "I had one report of the Junkie virus from
    Australia, which was more memorable for being hyped in the US press
    than anything else," he told PC User.  [Junkie was *everywhere*.  It
    was like the plague round here.  Shows you how crappy Scan has really
    become]

    The most prolific writer in Australia was a young Brisbane student
    who boasted broadly about his success until the Federal Police visited
    him with a warning over a year ago.  [We all know who this dude is :) ]
    According to Australian anti-virus workers, his approach consisted
    primarily of piecing together chunks of code from already extant viruses
    and making new ones without even studying the underlying techniques.

    The activity of the federal police and the anti-virus community in
    silencing Australia's most public virus writer has not meant an end to 
    this particular form of anti-social behaviour, however.  In August this
    year, a number of new viruses were discovered which appear to have been
    written here.

    [hehe... not us! ]

    One appeared on a bulletin board with the filename skid.exe apparently
    designed as a tool for other virus writers to use.  ['Skid Row' was
    written in Taiwan by Dark Slayer.  Awesome virus, but not Australian]
    This has no 'warhead' [They mean - destructive payload], it can only
    make copies of itself and hide.  Another one, a variation on the Lemmings
    virus, appears designed to attack users of the Thunderbyte anti-virus
    software.   [Variation ?  The original did as well!  And it was written
    in Australia originally]

    Virus writers in Australia stay in contact with each other through
    bulletin boards and informal groups at schools. [Nope, doesn't happen
    that much.  There aren't many coders around and you have to stay
    undercover with your activities and you don't advertise it.]  While
    bulletin boards are an effective way to swap code and ideas, virus
    writers are not welcome in many places and the Federal Police and
    researchers keep an eye on those boards which appear to encourage such
    activity. [Why ? They can't do shit because virus writing is legal!]

    These boards typically contain tracts [tracts=a writing of some sort.
    They are getting stuck into obscure words] from groups such as the
    Australian Institute of Hackers (AIH).  [Never heard of them]  The AIH
    supplies virus tutorials aimed at "wimps, faggots and lamers" who do not
    know how to write a 'real' virus.  [I don't think the AIH do either
    because I've never seen anything by them... perhaps lemmings ?]
    Fortunately for the rest of us, most of this is simply peer group
    grandstanding with the aim to prove one's cleverness rather than cause
    any real damage.

    The appearance of viruses targetted at particular anti-viral products
    is of some concern, and for that reason I have not quoted the anti-virus
    workers who helped me research this article by name.  [Lucky for them!
    The information is so poor they'd just look like fools.  Besides, I can
    tell by the huge ad for 'Virus Buster by Leprechaun' just below the
    article who one of them is! I think I'll log onto their bbs and hang up
    inside a door again to piss them off ha ha ha]

    So far Australia has not spawned any particularly evil geniuses, but
    caution is prudent.   [BwAhahAHahAhA!  VLAD is here! :) ]

    By Geoff Ebbs

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    Would the AIH please try and get in touch with us if they truly
    exist ?!  On IRC (Internet) in #virus is one place.

    Must be in some viral backwater like Sydney or Adelaide to
    avoid detection by VXers up until this point.  Probably just made up
    bullshit anyway.

    This whole article is crap.  Every second BBS has an infected copy of
    Scan (the old infection favourite :) online.  They looked at isolated
    infections.  Not only that, but got their information completely wrong!


                Qark/VLAD