The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 11

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1997 Features 11 OFTH VIRUS vK At 21, Clinton Haines never had the chance to grow out of an obsession with computer viruses which have wreaked havoc at the Tax Office and Telstra. JULIE ROBOTHAIYI reports. HE FIRST time he 'met Clint Haines, Rod Fewster was surprised by his height, his bulk and his aura of physical gress "he was working on one that was quite Haines was also working hard at his undergraduate science studies at the University of Queensland, where he was concentrating on the human equivalent of his computer bugs microbiology. He could have had a shining career ahead of him. Paradoxically, Fewster was not able to give Haines the help he most needed: when he asked for a job at Thunderbyte, Fewster was obliged to say, because of the need to keep his firm "squeaky clean" and free from the taint of the virus subculture.

"From an ethical point of view I couldn't afford to employ him. But he was conscientiously trying to divorce himself from the virus scene." Haines had been a bright star in the computer underground, according to George Smith, who has written a book, The Virus Creation Labs, on the subject and also edits a Net newsletter, Crypt (www.soci.niu.educrypt). "The virus writers who seemed to be most influenced by him were a group called VLAD, some members of whom were also from Brisbane," says Smith. "One named Qark, in particular, indicated he had been inspired to do the virus-writing thing by Haines. This appeared to be a result of the notoriety Haines accumulated." The day after Haines's death, VLAD released a new virus RIP Terminator-Z in memoriam.

Still, his sphere of influence was limited, says Smith, because the teenage computer underground is tiny compared with other youth cultures: "While there may be many people with the will or desire to write viruses, the great majority of them are just time-wasters and trivial pests. Individuals like Clint Haines are much smaller in number. North America might not even have half a dozen. Australia would be about the same." Haines's creations NoFrills and its derivatives Dudley and 483 have brought down computers at the Australian Taxation Office, Telstra and Suncorp, and wreaked much more havoc overseas. Unlike those written by Haines, most viruses have a fatal flaw which stops them being spread or activating effectively.

Jack Kenyon, the managing director of another Brisbane antivirus company, Leprechaun Software, believes most virus writers secretly yearn for a career in computers. There's inevitably a grey area, he says; some teenagers dabble in the virus culture simply for a better comprehension of programming techniques. But the more typical virus writer is, "pretty immature a lot are pretty young, and they're full of "They think they're bloody good and I guess a lot of them are quite good," Kenyon says. They rarely reveal themselves face to face, but pursue in cyberspace their love-hate relationship with the people who try to kill their creations. Generally this is not the regular, public parts of the Inter- A master of the viruses the late Clinton Haines.

CYBERTALK HACKER: A person who is adept at finding his or her way round large, gains access to supposedly secure, off-limits systems in order to win kudos among the cracker elite. May make superficial changes, such as leaving abusive messages, as a way of boasting to the system's administrators, or make more damaging changes such as diverting money from bank accounts. PHREAKER: Someone who cracks into a phone system in order to gain access to other computers, usually overseas. Phreakers generally target the PABX systems of large corporations, where the theft of telecommu nications time is less likely to be noticed. Almost always goes hand-in-hand with computer system cracking not only does it mean the cracker is not responsible for the massive overseas phone bills; it also helps cover his or her tracks.

VIRUS WRITER: A person who writes strings of self-replicating computer code, which may be harmless or devastating for the computers they infect. The rise of the Internet, with its capacity to spread viruses from one computer to another, has led to a resurgence of virus writers. net, which the virus writers scorn, but ephemeral private places called bulletin board systems (BBSs), the temporary address of which is passed around by word-of -mouth, like the rave party scene. In public discussion areas, such as altcomp. virus on the Internet, the chat is usually low-level and immature, with the occasional frisson when a virus creator deigns to pay a visit.

Last week there was a message from a US schoolgirl who wanted to have a virus sent to her stepfather, to punish him for stealing her computer equipment. A boy asked for help on, "how to bypass telnet when it asks for a login and password 'cause I want to change people's schedule 'cause I hate some people and want to put them in special ed." And another young male offers to, "send you over 300 WORKING passwords if you send me either: adult check ID; adult pass; or any other age verification There was also an illustration of the kinds of things on which virus writers expend their considerable programming skills in order to achieve: "I need some help here. My friend has a virus infection at his computer at work. When he runs a DOS program he gets a message about this cereal will taste better with a little milk He cannot access Windows 95 at all and once in a while a Star Wars effect will come on the screen." "People generally grow out of virus writing," says Smith. "There's the adolescent thrill associated with the tacit understanding that bystanders are intimidated by the activity.

Older virus writers have much more to lose from negative publicity. Often they have respectable jobs and families. For example there was an Australian virus writer, Screaming Radish, who had a house, a family, and a lucrative job as a programmer." After his NoFrills virus hit the ATO, Haines was interviewed by the police, but was never charged. In the UK, with its more comprehensive laws on computer crime, another 21 -year-old went down for 18 months in late 1995. Chris Pile, who went by the handle Black Baron, was told by the judge: "Those who seek to wreak mindless havoc on one of the vital tools of our age cannot expect lenient treatment" Pile's defence called him a "sad That could not have been said of Clint Haines.

But he never had time to put his dangerous obsession behind him. complex computer systems, with no previous knowledge or documentation. The main motivation is the acquisition of further technical skill, rather than a desire to cause damage. CRACKER: The criminal version of a hacker; a person who deliberately health. Haines, then 15, had been described by his teacher to Fewster as a "little and he had formed the impression of a pale, skinny, Artful Dodger type.

That would have been more in keeping with the stereotypical image of a teenage computer hacker an embittered, antisocial kid sequestered in a stuffy room with a pile of computer equipment no-one else could understand. But Haines, the creator of some of the world's most notorious computer viruses, was a contradiction in many ways. From a privileged background in Brisbane's better suburbs, he was acknowledged to be exceptionally bright. He had a sense of humour, which set him apart in a largely adolescent community that takes itself very seriously. He was even sporty he played rugby and his father is a tennis coach.

It's a connection that becomes apparent in his paean to drug-taking, described in an Internet newsgroup: "Nitrousing out in this state of mind can be wicked one can see, perceive, visualise everything that goes on in the particular mental environment you construct the passage of a tennis ball under the influence of gravity or the evolution of an argument and the interplay of multiple factors." Haines died two weeks ago, aged 21, in the smart Brisbane suburb of St Lucia. His friends believe he took a much purer mix of heroin than is generally available. His death was "a loss to the says Fewster, the director of the Brisbane company, Thun-derbyte, which specialises in cleaning up computers polluted by computer viruses ingenious rogue strings of computer code that reproduce in the machine's innards, to the detriment of its legitimate contents. Fewster is convinced that Haines, whose virus-writing aliases included Harry McBungus, Terminator-Z and TaLoN, went straight two years ago. Since then he had not released a virus in the which could damage other people's property, though his fascination with them continued; he still wrote new viruses as a challenge to himself and had shown Fewster his work in pro A PLAGUE OF VIRUSES 1988: An experimental virus afflicting Unix computers escaped and shut down 6,000 mainly US military and university computers on the ARPANET network, the Internet's precursor.

1989: Marijuana virus hit a secure area of the Department of Defence. It also brought down most of Monash University's computers and hit other Australian campuses. 1993: Dudley, a variant of Clint Haines' NoFrills, hits 1,000 computers within AOTC (now Telstra), bringing them to a standstill within two hours. 1993-94: Chris Pile's SMEG. Pathogen virus is estimated to have caused $1.4 million worth of damage to British companies.

1995: NoFrills infects a handful of Australian Taxation Office computers; ATO decides to turn off all of its 15,000 computers until the virus is eradicated, to avoid spread of infection. 1997: Australian survey reveals 90per cent of large organisations have suffered a virus attack, mostly within the last two years, and 88 per cent thought the problem was getting worse. Gulf wives' syndrome For over 40 years Esanda has been helping Australians to prosper. So don't just make some money, save some money. If you'd like a prospectus call Esanda on 13 12 15.

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For four days, 250 participants from 16 countries were isolated from men and driven around in black-windowed Mercedes and heavily curtained coaches like some precious sexual cargo. Most of the Qatari participants covered their hair and wore black cloaks. But some, despite the all-female environment, hid their faces completely under an impenetrable black chiffon scarf. In some countries such as Tunisia, women have equal rights in divorce and custody actions, and the right to abortion on demand. Like many women in North Africa and the Levant, they also vote.

All this is, of course, sanctioned by the Koran, say Arab feminists. But in Saudi Arabia, women are forbidden to drive or travel alone. They are even still fighting for the right to have a plastic identity card. ID cards, which carry photographs, lead to men seeing the face, and that leads to independence, and independence leads to adultery, as one disgusted newspaper reader pointed out recently. Jordanian women, meanwhile, are about to embark on a campaign to ban the ultimate bonus for Muslim men the right to have four wives simultaneously.

Once again, they are arguing on the basis of Islam, asserting that it is impossible to treat all the wives equally as the Koran requires. In Qatar, like many other Gulf countries, women graduates and postgraduates now outnumber the men by three to two. "If a woman BSc in economics went for a job in a bank and was competing for the post against a man with a high-school diploma, often the man would get it," said Hanadi bint Nasser al-Thani, a Qatari lecturer in economics. But the educational gap threatens to revolutionise relations between men and women. A number of Qatari women are already earning more than their husbands.

Not surprisingly, sparks flew at the meeting. A heavily veiled Saudi speaker argued that Islam obliged women to have as many as children as possible. Working could mean leaving children in the hands of heathen nannies, she told the delegates. "What's the point about talking about our rights among ourselves? We have to start a dialogue with men," a Qatari graduate pointed out at the meeting. Not all agree.

Fatima, a statistician with the state audit bureau, said she recently turned down a promotion because it would have involved more contact with men. In Saudi Arabia, men and women government employees have separate entrances and work on separate floors. Even in the new liberal Qatar, the public library has ladies-only days. But Yemeni women have just made it to parliament in a straight contest with men. And in Doha, Qatari women were demanding government creches and an end to restrictions on driving and single women travelling.

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