VOO_doo

[John Young]

   9-12-95. NYPaper:


   "Bulletin Board Is Virtual; Hacker Arrests Are Real."

      It was a classic sting operation, the kind of undercover
      gambit that has nabbed bad guys for decades. But the
      meeting place for this subterfuge was not some grimy
      storefront. It was a computer bulletin board that the
      United States Secret Service had rigged together to
      troll for people who are illegally trafficking in the
      codes that program cellular phones.


   " 'Innocent' Files Can Carry a Virus."

      A new kind of computer virus has descended upon the
      world. How easy is it to create one? Fifteen minutes
      after opening a Microsoft Word reference manual, I had
      cranked out a one-line program that could eliminate
      crucial system files from a hard drive. By bedtime I had
      figured out how to get this file to transmogrify Word
      itself so it would embed my trick program in any
      document it opened. In an evening, I had created a virus
      of my very own. This is scary stuff. Scarier still is
      that if I can do it, millions of others can too.
      Henceforth virtually every document on the information
      highway must be considered suspect. 


   2: VOO_doo