Introduction
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Well I don't think the release date has been held back this time,
mostly because I didn't really give any definite release time,
this was a good decision I think. This is issue is as usual pretty
much packed full with viruses and related information.
Hopefully the code contained in this issue is definitely bug free,
we haven't had the best past for this but we're checking things out
a little better now. If you find one, email me and I'll kill
whoever did it :).
The group has expanded once more, there are now seven of us, and
it's definitely the last addition to the group. Although I said
the same thing last issue, I think it's definite this time. Now
we have a decent amount of members it means I can take a rest
(shya!).
Quantum makes his appearance with his two viruses, Bane and
Tasha Yar Mark II. It's Mark II because he originally wrote
Tasha Yar as his "application" virus and when it actually came
to testing the virus, it didn't work! hehe so it's a rewrite of
the original. He also wrote half of the windows virus, which
is something I have no clues about :).
Much like last issue there's a contribution (or two) from
everyone in this issue. Not as many as some people would have
liked but there aren't any more spaces anyway :). We've pretty
much fulfilled our goals in virus authoring so now we have to
think up some new ideas for us to do. We may write a
com/exe/newEXE infector just to expand the technology but who knows.
The work up to this issue was a little slow to begin with since
people's commitments at university/college kinda cut down on
productivity. At last though, it's here and it's an impressive
assortment of code. There are plenty of independant submissions
which makes the magazine more interesting.
VLAD now has a world wide web page, at the moment it's at
'http://nether.net/~halflife' but it will eventually be moved
to 'http://tmok2.tmok.com/~meta'. So when you can no longer
reach the page at nether.net you know it has moved :). On the
page you can read about our progress towards the next issue and
there are hypertext copies of vlad#2-4. There are also links to
other virus pages around the place, so check them out also..
Well that's just about all I have to say with relevance to us,
now I'll pass along a little news of what has been happening in
the virus scene.
The group mentioned in vlad#2 & 3 AIH has now officially split
up. They were responsible for the Aussie Parasite family and
the Aussie Tiny viruses. A couple of the members have gone onto
cracking games whilst Dark Fiber has joined NuKE.
He's not the only person to join NuKE recently. There are three
other additions to the group. Virogen and Diddler from USA, and
Stalker X from South Africa. On the other hand, Mr.Twister has
quit the group and is off to do bigger and better things :).
Red_a and Blonde have joined Immortal Riot so there's another
couple of helping hands to get their Insane Reality magazine
out. The Unforgiven tells me he has some full stealth viruses
ready to put out so issue 7 of insane reality should be
something to check out.
The scene with Aristotle seems to have quietened down, I've
given up reading echomail so I wouldn't have a clue what's
going on there. Although if you get yourself a copy of the
Chiba City times #3 check out his MBC v2.0 for a little message
about us on exit.
40hex issue 14 has finally been released, after a while of
saying it'll be out next week (every week ;) garbage heap
finally got it done. It's definitely worth checking out.
It seems Urnst Kouch just can't keep things to himself, in
his latest issue of the crypt newsletter he managed let slip
more private info about another virus author. Although he
emailed me after vlad#3 and told me that the mentioned person
knew all about it (re crypt #29) the same cannot be said for
this case. Here's a little hint for everyone, if Urnst wants
to speak to you, you keep your mouth shut :).
Our friend Zvi Netiv the author of Invircible that lovely
AV package has finally done himself in. He has been banned
from Fido's virus and virus_info echos. Before he got himself
kicked out, he implied Vesselin Bontchev was the Dark Avenger,
and he said that Vesselin's phd was taking him so long because
he's slack. Vesselin hit back by posting a message claiming
that IV is a trojan because it will overwrite a file called
'sofia' in the root directory. Actually, Zvi isn't too popular
with a lot of people at the moment, due to his criticism of
opposition anti-virus software, with Frans Veldman (TBAV) and
Wolfgang Stiller (Integrity Master) both taking offence at
some of his comments.
Quite a few of our viruses from vlad#3 have now been added
to the growing list of scanned viruses by TBAV and F-Prot.
Although not all, I'd say they picked the wrong ones to scan.
Since hemlock still isn't detected when it's TSR due to the
various stealths.
I haven't seen too much happen around me lately so I don't
have that much info for this issue, but I hope you got something
out of the little I did have to say.
Metabolis/VLAD
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