Cheers for John Gilmore in his defense of free speech and liberty! The Net.Nazi who apparently criticized him for inappropriate use of the Net clearly understands neither the nature of free exchange of ideas nor the relative innocuousness of Murdering Thug's article on viruses. Thug's article on polymorphic viruses was factual and made some good points, and certainly was not very controversial. And even if it was controversial, so what? Frankly, Thug's article was pretty tame (no offense, Thug...a lot of our postings are pretty tame). I've seen more details elsewhere on the Dark Avenger Mutation Engine, so big deal! (The "virus construction kit" idea was also recently the subject of an article in one of the trade rags, and I recall Steve Gibson writing at least two fairly alarmist and detailed articles on polymorphic viruses for "Infoworld." And the trade journal "Computers and Security" has extensive coverage of all of these virus technologies.) As with so many things that the cop and spy mentalities want kept secret from the riffraff, who gains by keeping the secrets? The Bulgarian virus writers (could this whole "Bulgarian" thing be just part of the propaganda campaign by the SPA and GoreTechs to ensure a "safe" network, a la NREN? Just a thought.) certainly will be a lot more current than casual readers of a brief article. If discussion of viruses is discouraged--or even banned--who will benefit? Ordinary citizens will be kept in the dark, while the virus guys at Los Alamos and the Army Center for Signal Warfare (Vint Hill Station, VA) will continue to let out contracts for virus warfare to MITRE and their ilk, while bogus stories get out (like the supposed viruses planted in equipment bound for Iraq just before the war started), and while the supposed "good guys" like Fred Cohen (he wrote the first big study of viruses and brunnering) are busy proposing "good viruses" that would seek out tax evaders, deadbeat Dads, and other subversives! (Lord, save us from the fools!). Meanwhile, the French SDECE is spying on everyone they can and probably was behind CLODO (Comite Liquidant ou Detoumant les Ordinateurs), the anti-computer terrorist group. The better to scare the populace, don't you know? I say, let's expand the scope of the Cypherpunks list to include more discussion of viruses. We can't let it become a monopoly of the Authorities (the Brunner Authority instead of the Turing Authority?) The "Cypherpunk Ethic" says we don't trust authority to tell us how to compute, and we don't understand defense methods until we understand attack methods. QED. Frankly, I expect the next target of the powerfreak authorities to be our work on anonymous remailers and digital money. They'll come to see that as a bigger threat than mere viruses. -Tim May -- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: MailSafe and PGP available.