The annual conferences of the Chaos Club were held in Hamburg, always in December. They attracted the cream of the German hacker community, as well as observers from throughout Europe and elsewhere; were always well covered by the media; and, without a doubt, were carefully watched by the local police. Each conference was given a theme that was designed to excite media attention, and in 1986 the theme was computer viruses.
Even though little was known about viruses at the time, the conference organizers hoped piously that the publicity given to the subject would help dispel myths. The organizers also declared: "The problem isn't computer viruses, but the dependence on technology," and they blamed the writing of viruses on "bad social condition(s) for programmers."
The star performer at the conference was Ralf Burger, simply because he had actually written a virus, which in those days was something of a feat. To prove that his virus, Virdem, would work, Burger handed out copies to some two or three hundred interested delegates. He said it would "give users a chance to work with computer viruses."
Technically, any virus is little more than a self-replicating program with a sting in its tail. This sting, usually known as the payload, is what the virus actually does to the computer, which is often nothing at all--apart from replicating, or performing a harmless joke, such as making a ball bounce around the screen or instructing the computer to play a tune. At another level, how- ever, the payload can cause the destruction of data.
Computer viruses are carried from computer to computer by diskette or, in networked computers, by the wires that link them. they can also be transmitted on telephone lines, through modems, like ordinary computer programs. Viruses do not fly through the air and cannot jump from computer to computer vithout being carried by a physical medium. Moreover, all viruses are man-written: they aren't natural, or caused spontaneously by computer technology. The only "artificial life" inherent in a virus is its tendency to modify itself as it is copied, but that's possible with any computer program.
This explanation may seem simple to the point of absurdity, but when viruses first began to garner mentions in the press, and breathless reporters began to write lurid stories about "technological viruses," their properties were exaggerated into the realm of science fiction. Viruses made a good story--even when there was no evidence that they had actually damaged anything.
In 1986, when Burger made his presentation to the Chaos conference, there were almost no viruses in existence. Few people in the computer industry had ever seen one, despite increasing interest in the subject from security experts, who were touting them as the next big threat to computer systems. The simple fact was that Burger's Virdem was probably the only virus that most of them had even heard about.
The properties of viruses and the damage that they could cause were widely known, however. Even the nightmare scenario had been posited: that a plague of viruses would move swiftly through the computers of the world, wiping out data and devastating corporations, government agencies, police forces, financial institutions, the military, and, eventually, the structure of modern society itself. By 1986, however, actual attacks by viruses on computer systems had yet to occur.
The next year, 1987, Burger's book about computer viruses Das Grosse-computervirenbuch, was published by Data Becker GmbH of Dusseldorf. In the book Burger warned: "Traveling at what seems the speed of moving electrons, comical, sometimes destructive programs known as viruses have been spreading through the international computer community like an uncontrollable plague." There was in fact no hard evidence for this statement, and later in the book, contradicting the apocalyptic tone of the first section, Burger admitted: "So far it has been impossible to find proof of a virus attack."
Later that year, two new viruses appeared. The first was created by the Greek computer magazine Pixel, which had hired a local computer wizard named Nick Nassufis to write one. The magazine published the virus as a list of BASIC-language instructions in the April 1987 issue. Readers who keyed in the instructions found themselves with a fully functioning virus on their comput- ers. It didn't do much apart from replicate, but from time to time it would display a poorly written English language message on the computer screen: PROGRAM SICK ERROR: CALL DOCTOR OR BUY PIXEL FOR CURE DESCRIPTION. Three months later Pixel published instructions for wiping it out.
