----/\--[ The birth and fall of the AIH ]--/\----
bardic storytelling by Dark Fiber
some background muse by Australian Parasite
[Long Version]
[Complete with unfamiliar two and three letter acronyms]
As of Tuesday the 18th April 1995 the AIH ceased to exist, and Dark Fiber
[Me] was in the process of becoming a NuKE member.
Right about now you're saying to yourself AIH? Dark Fiber? Who da smeg!
So, okay, the Australian Institute of Hackers started life in 1986 as one
of those Cracker gangs, there were more members than you could poke a stick
at, because the leader [Chairman] let anybody in. After cracking about 30
games in 3 years Chairman met Australian Parasite in 1989, which from the
Chairman's point of view was probably the worst thing that could have
happened.
In less than a year Australian Parasite was running the AIH and he ousted
all of the old members and had begun a drive for new members. Enter Dark
Fiber, and a few people I can't remember. We continued life cracking games
and writing cheat modes and other cracker-like activities.
Two months had passed and secret meetings were underway between myself
and AP [I had been placed "Second In Command" by this stage] to turn the
group into a virus writers gang.
It was now 1990 and AP and I were fumbling along on the virus front,
[Ugh, you remember the old days? The direct action .COM infectors :)] and
we met up with a guy called Digital Vampyr in another australian cracking
gang [Whom we'd later dissolve into our gang] and he expressed interest in
viruses but would rather continue cracking.
Life continued on as normal, with cracking games and writing simple
viruses, then suddenly the australian scene was alive [1992]. Now SCP
[Southern Corrupt Programmers if I remember correctly] and a person whom we
thought was Harry McBungus. Unfortunately, we had no contact with any of
them [Australia has always been pretty closed off in terms of
communication].
During the month of June 1992 we decided to do the virus tutorial.
This is where things get dicey. Three memebers dutifully wrote material
and code for it, and somebody even wrote up the tute-engine-viewer prog,
but the funny thing was, when it was released only 1 name appeared on it
(on v0.2) anyhow]. In less than 1 week there was no more AIH as every
member expressed their feelings towards everybody else in the group. This
was to be our first complete dissbandment of two official disbandments.
One month passed and we decided to rejoin as a virus only group, so we
ousted all the members except for a couple, and we took over the group MMK
[Memory Management Killers] which brought us some crackers again.
August 1992 and Tonya Harding [CARO=Skater] was doing the rounds [This
was waaaaaay before she banged up Nancy] of a few places. About this time
we had decided to do a bug fixed version of the tutorial, minus the section
on trojans and ansi bombs. And lo and behold, there were the correct
amount of names on it this time [v1.00/v1.01].
February 1993 was our second doomsday. Some of the crackers were not
impressed that one of my intros was carrying a virus [It was a delay
dropper, and timed to go off 1 year AFTER the date on in the intro].
People were getting restless. Shit was hitting the fan in the form of
group politics. The kind of politics like "He fingered me to the police"
[Turns out nobody fingered anybody to the police, just some lamer on one of
our boards was crying wolf to the sysop] and things like "We need a new
leader".
Group politics suck. From February 1993 to September 1993 we did not
exist. Some viruses were released in July\August but they were
"unsolicited group releases" by both AP and I. Nothing was then released
until March 1994 [I never said not written tho] AP was concentrating on
writing "non-underground" programs and utilities and his commitment to the
group wanned dramatically, things were really stale, then the backstabbing
started up.
From the time period of June 1994 to about December 1994 nothing
remarkable happened, life went on, and my DiskMagazineGenerator [Plug, plug]
was started.
December 1994, who opened the fridge?
Enter a furious AP, who dumped every single member overnight. All
passwords on our three member boards changed, and they all recieved an
official "Sod off" on the phone. There were now five members, AP, me,
Vibrant Pixel, Track2Track and Digital Vampyr.
March 1995, a cold day in hell. Phone rings.
AP: "You're a fucken arsehole. I'm gonna take you to the cops."
"Whats going on? I don't have a problem with you, so don't you
start anything with me you hear!"
DF: "Umm. Nice to hear from you top, and um, what are you talking about?"
AP: "Well, just don't fuck with me is all."
Phone gets slammed in my ear.
An hour later I get another call, this ones a conference call.
VP: "I'm running things now [AIH]."
"We'll let you back in if you tell us all you know about XXXX XXXXXX"
[XXX = My old "fake name", just that he didn't know, he thought it
was AP's real name]
DF: "Oh, you're running things are you?"
T2T: "We know your backing AP, so if you help us we'll let you back in."
DF: "What exactly is going on? Give me some details."
The rest of the conversation revolved around a so-called phone tapping of
someones phone and that a particular member wanted to take over.
April 1995, Tuesday the 4th to be exact, a call from Digital Vampyr
DV: "Hey DF, whos XXXXXXXX [VP]?"
DF: "Oh, so they on to you too eh?"
[Me and AP knew that DV was moving to England]
DV: "Yeah, something weird is going on, first he threatens me,
then he offers me a spot in his gang."
Digital was threatened with being dobbed in to the police by VP....
The pieces are startng to fall into place, but its useless to do anything
now because everyone is pissed at everyone else.
April 1995, Tuesday the 18th, the Breaking of a 5 year pact.
AP: "Hey, DF, we're dissolved okay?"
DF: "I've been expecting this for a while now."
AP: "I'm retiring from the virus scene and anything concerning the
underground, stay in touch ok."
[Yes, the sum total of the conversation!]
April 1995, Thursday the 20th.
Everyone is at McDonalds in the city [Nice neutral place], where we
finally thrashed out all our differences, and were all "friends" again, so
now there is no more AIH, but there is also no more bitterness which is
good.
The real reason behind the takeover bid, for those of you who are still
reading at this point, is, Vibrant Pixel heard a rumor that AP was going to
drop him from the gang, so he made for a leadership bid. Track thought he
could get more recognition, so he went for the ride and fed false rumors to
VP that I was supporting AP and that we'd take any action necessary to blow
them out of the water. AP gets threatening phone calls and is told that
I'm going to dob him in and take over and that I have the support from
everyone else in the gang.
During this process I was making innquiries about other groups in oz,
VLAD were full up, but NuKE seemed to be looking for a new member....
Enter many people who tell me not to join NuKE.... But here I am. The
moment I get a whiff of group politics is the moment I become an
independant.
Cast list, coz not everyones up with acronyms you've been used to for 5
years.
AIH = Australian Institute of Hackers
DF = Dark Fiber
AP = Australian Parasite
DV = Digital Vampyr
CC = CyberCrack [Hmmm, I don't think I mentioned him.]
T2T = Track2Track
VP = Vibrant Pixel
Okay, heres some general non-related stuff from me.
Q: How many viruses are we responsible for?
A: Well if you look in F-Prot or AVP listings and look up the keyword
Aust(ralian), and well, probably every one of those. Most of them were
labeled Australian_Parasite because he put his name in them more often than
the rest of us did.
Q: Where can I get em?
A: In the time of 1990 to 1993 we released over 100 viruses and these
pieces of shit can be found in AIHV9093.ARJ which also includes v1.01 or
v1.02 of our tutorial. [499kb worth of stuff]
Q: How come some viruses you've written were also "written" by Australian
Parasite?
A: Don't ask, but the Split_Second (PreRelease) fiasco and other
Virus_Tutorial ripoffs are in the past.
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