Forwarded From: "Prosser, Mike" <Mike_Prosserat_private> [FYI- had this fwd'd to me on "Blitzkrieg Server" I send out last week...the Crypt Newsletter does lots of stories on the "far-fetched" stories that are published/appear in magazine or on the Net. The editor has the same disbelief of this "wunder-kind" server that we should all have...just expresses it better, I think.......I still would be interested if anyone is at the Tech show where this server is supposed to be demonstrated would let me know how it went... - Mike] > http://www.soci.niu.edu/~crypt/other/blitz.htm > > > "In a significant Internet breakthrough that could enhance electronic > commerce and protect sensitive corporate and government data, computer > scientists have developed a new virus that automatically launches a > lethal counter offensive against hackers." > Written in the pseudo-authoritative tone that's become the watermark of corporate exaggeration, the above blurb came in over the electronic transom via the Business Newswire on May 6. It makes the assumption that most Americans -- including magazine editors -- are certified ninnies fresh from the Roman province of Paphlagonia, where the populace gained the reputation of extreme stupidity, ready to swallow even the grossest delusion. The Business Newswire press release breathlessly continued, ". . . a growing echelon of chief technology officers are likening the stealthy, anti-hacker virus to the digital equivalent of Star Wars technology: once a computer server detects an attack on its security it launches a killer virus that knocks out the computer on the other end by destroying both software and hardware." The miraculous software is called a "Blitzkrieg server." Alert readers of Crypt Newsletter will note the conflation of two myths in the sales pitch: The computer virus that destroys hardware and . . . Star Wars, which existed only on paper. The Business Newswire release injected a good amount of phlogiston into the mix, attributing quotes to an editor named Clarence A. Robinson of Signal magazine, who stated for the hype machine, "This has profound implications for the Internet . . . [Many are] worried a hacker will someday succeed in stealing or destroying sensitive data . . . missile silo locations, that kind of stuff. But this new nonlinear algorithm means a successful penetration could be a hacker's worst nightmare." However, the real gems are found in the May issue of Signal magazine, AFCEA's journal for information systems workers. In an article on the "Blitzkrieg server," Robinson combines ferociously impenetrable techno-gobble, a loaded wheelbarrow of anonymous sources and a doomsday conspiracy of unnamed Japanese and American hackers thwarted by "Blitzkrieg." ". . . the Blitzkrieg server is a self-programmed, fault-immune, ubiquitous virus-like system," he writes. Developed by a Santa Fe, New Mexico, scientist named Larry Wood, Blitzkrieg is a product of the (and Crypt Newsletter is not making this up) Network Waffen Und Munistionsfabriken [sic] Group. Robinson quotes an unnamed (of course, it always must be this way) CIA "information security specialist" who said the Blitzkrieg server's "digital life form" was "potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons." Another yahoo, this one a "law enforcement agent" of equally nebulous origin, is called upon to state for the record that "[Blitzkrieg]" is a computer virus with an attitude." Scientist Wood is credited with forming an "advanced machine intelligence information warfare group" used to solve "intractable" information warfare problems at DoD. For Signal, Wood claimed that Blitzkrieg had been responsible for determining "Japanese nationals," in cooperation with the "2600 international hacker group," were about to attack U.S. corporations and state government offices in California. Blitzkrieg thwarted the Japanese attack after "thousands" of Americans and "hundreds" of corporations were affected. The State Department declined to file a protest or notify the media, the Signal article indicates. And now, lest your attention be wandering, comes the really good part. Apparently, the "Blitzkrieg server" is powered by "self-programmed adaptive automatacapsids--variable length string transformation rules." "When examined on an individual basis, no automatacapsid in and of itself has any meaning," said Wood for Signal. "The automatacapsid only has value in the context of the distributed Blitzkrieg server network collective . . . the adaptive automatacapsids, like fragments of a living virus without a host cell, transform one another and data, and they spontaneously generate or regenerate new automatacapsids to meet every conceivable complex data analysis need." Hold it. Just a little further. Crypt Newsletter is not done yet. Wood goes on to say to Signal that his "automatacapsids" make the "Blitzkrieg server" invincible. And they are dependent on another Wood discovery -- the "unified general equation of motion -- or UGEM." Readers are informed the Wood Unified General Equation of Motion has something to do with the control of complexity and all organization in nature. So Blitzkrieg, the scientist claimed in Signal, is "the first true virus-like collective digital life form." All of this material is, of course, hooked to a sales pitch by a company called The FutureVision Group. Ultimately, all the fantastic lore is aimed at getting the interested investor or potential buyer to a high tech conference in Washington, D.C., in June in which the "Blitzkrieg server" will be used to "simulate a computer attack that disables a defense agency by making it impossible to launch any missiles." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Notes: For those readers with an excessively dry sense of humor Crypt Newsletter suggests much of this particular story seems accidentally cloned from "Killswitch," an episode of The X-Files that aired earlier this television season. In "Killswitch," a group of computer scientists, one from Santa Fe, created the first digital life form -- a series of "concatenated automata viruses." Scully and Mulder, along with the bumbling editors of Lone Gunman magazine, tracked the intelligent software to a crumbling trailer filled with computer hardware parked in the woods near Fairfax, Virginia. The original Business Newswire from May 6 was datelined -- Fairfax. -o- Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 12:52:50 PDT