Well, about a month ago a NuKE associate received a call from a female reporter named Barbara Lewis; it was not our first, and surely not our last. Nevertheless, the topic she arose was quite interesting! We have the complete conversation with our NuKE member and Barbara Lewis.

For those that need more info, Barbara Lewis is an English reporter for the _Sunday Telegraph_ in the United Kingdom. The article should also be published in the _New York Times_, and I guess we will pin it up with the others now. Anyhow the conversation...

Beep-Bop-Beep-Dot-Beep-Beep-Bop. [Dials the number...]

Hello?

Yes, I'm looking for "Joseph Greco," as I am a reporter, Barbara Lewis, for the _Sunday Telegraph_ in London. Is he there?

This is he, how can I help you. [The old charms.]

I am writing an article on virus groups and related underground activities, I received this number from a friend telling me I could get some information from you.

What do you wish to know, and I will see if I can help you.

I wish to know about the virus writers, why do they write such programs? What do they find from these malicious programs?

I believe you have the concept all messed up. Speaking on the behalf of NuKE members we find that producing perhaps the most technological advanced virus to exist, will if chance help the AV (anti-virus) community to develop a standard or perhaps a minimum of what their packages should do, as if it is capable of the most advanced virus then getting the others is no problem. Also, we see today that the anti-virus community are trying to pull a suppression over all the computer users, and terrorize them with this bad thing called a virus. Of course this method is simply for the fact of increasing sales of their AV product, which in turn is described to perform miracles when it comes to virus protection. We have all heard about the well known SCAN by McAfee, we have succeed in removing all their virus strings and have found that there was only 850 of them, and doesn't SCAN boast 1700+ viruses? Perhaps he has a copy of every virus twice? Who knows!

So you say that you are helping out the AV community?

Well, not really, our basic idea is to help YOU, the average computer user that is dumb on computer structures and uses these software packages to only later find out he was raped, raped out of his data and his money. I'll give you an example. F-Prot is heard to be a great anti-viral kit, and that it can stop many viruses at its tracks, unknown and known. Inside the F-Prot kit there is a program called VIRSTOP, it is a TSR program that will check every file you run for infection etc... Now who would expect that VIRSTOP only detects 800 viruses, NOT MORE! And the strings are cheap works that would lose all credit for Frisk and his package if "word got out!" Lemme tell you, the well-known encryption engines like MtE are NOT detected by VIRSTOP! It is not a miss in code, Frisk NEVER put the damn routine inside, it is incapable to detect any polymorphic virus that has infected the system! You have just succeeded into screwing yourself just as McAfee did with SCAN! See, we are here to show you the facts, many people are not able to disassemble and look through the code and find out what the virus package can detect! So we bring this information out to the public, all I say is TRUE and can be backed up with the proof I found inside these AV programs!

What about the virus writers wanting to cause damage?

Again that is why we are here, if you produce you a virus that is unbelievable, the advances in the scanners will increase by learning from our viruses, and the chances of a 14-year-old wanting to create a virus for revenge or whatever reason cannot compete with this and their virus become a failure, which is exactly what we want! And we too do not enjoy those "kids" that enjoy damage, we run this organization legally and seriously. If we do find such a user within our circle surely he will be made an example of.

There has been a group of teenagers in England that were virus writers and called themselves ARCV, they have been arrested as of Feb 8th, 1993 and are going on trial for creating viruses. What do you think of this?

Yes, ARCV, I knew them well. In this case I CANNOT say that I am happy to see them arrested, you see many of there viruses have been found and related to VCL/MPC generators. See, VCL is a friendly user kit standing for Virus Creation Laboratory, all one has to do is flag on the option he/she would want with his dandy mouse and once done hit compile and the kit will produce you the virus you asked it to do. Now are we going to put some- one on trial for simply using such a program? Are we going to introduce laws that make it illegal to run certain programs in YOUR OWN computer? I find that a laugh! They certainly can not be responsible!

Then whom are we going to made responsible for these acts?

Tough question, well I certainly do not believe that ARCV is. I know several whom have used the VCL kit to generate viruses to test how effective their anti-virus program was. This person created the virus, in order to test them, should he be arrested and tried? How do we know if a "bullet-proof" vest can withstand a bullet? Naturally we test it! Also I find you are loosing touch with the real issue! A virus is nothing but a program, it can not be created by itself, it will do exactly what the creator wanted it to do! Nothing more or less. ARCV's virus never contain any DAMAGING CODE, they were viruses with little messages and all... Wouldn't you say the guilty person is the one that intensionally or carelessly created the virus for the produce to cause havoc? The maker of a gun is not responsible for all the murders but those that use it for that intension are.

You seem to know a lot on what is happening on this topic, may I ask to what organization you belong to?

Sure, we called ourselves "NuKE" we are an international group, ranging from Canada, USA, Australia, Europe. We are highly organized, much more than what anybody would expect! We monitor the virus and AV scene, not many would know it, but we do. We are the makers of VCL which was the first of its kind, and STILL IS, the ONLY virus kit to fully create your unique virus, many like MPC consist on one virus which is broken up, we provide options as adding you own feature or choose any 24 we have. We will be releasing a VCL v2.0 to be again the FIRST of its kind surpassing anything out there, it may "boggle" the world, but it will set new standards and pave new methods of virus scanning, it will unfortunately kill the little guys, by in this world you have to be very competitive. The VCL kit will perhaps be marketed, if you wish you may even buy an advance copy when it comes out within a month!

Sounds interesting, what is the price range?

Humm...I guess 75$-100$ (US)

I'll leave you my number, +44-XX-XXX-XXXX. Call me when this program is available.

K0ol...Will do... [Wow a date already?]

I thank you for you time, and good day. [Mush]

Okay now taw-taw... [English humour]