Terminal Compromise Part 16

"Dave here, can I help you?" The voice spoke quickly and indif- ferently.

"Mary Wallstone, in Gompers office. My computer seems to be having a little problem . . ." Mary tried to treat the problem lightly.

"You and half of Congress. Listen . . .is it Mary? This morning is going to be a slow one. My best guess is that over 2500 com- puters died a quick death. And you know what that mean."

"No, I don't..." Mary said hesitantly.

"It means a Big Mac Attack."

"A what?"

"Big Mac, it's a computer virus. We thought that Virus-Stop software would stop it, but I guess there's a new strain out there. Congress is going to be ordering a lot of typewriters and legal pads for a while."

"You mean you can't fix it? This virus?"

"Listen, it's like getting the flu. Once you got it, you got it.

You can't pretend you aren't sick. Somebody took a good shot at Congress and well . . .they won. We're gonna be down for a while. Couple of weeks at least. Look, good luck, but I gotta go." Dave hung up.

Mary ate the other three donuts intended for her boss as she sat idle at her desk wondering if she would have a job now that there were no more computers on Capitol Hill.

CONGRESS CATCHES FLU - LOSES FAT IN PROCESS by Scott Mason, New York City Times

The Congressional Budget Office announced late yesterday that it was requesting over $1 Million in emergency funding to counter a devastating failure of Congress's computers.

Most of the computers used by both Senators and Representatives are Apple Macintosh, but Apple Computer issued a quick statement denying any connection between the ma.s.sive failures and any production problems in their machines.

The CBO said that until the problems were corrected, estimates to take up to four weeks, that certain normal Congressional activi- ties would be halted or severely curtailed. Electronic mail, E- Mail that has saved taxpayers millions, will be unavailable for communications until October at a minimum. Inter-office communi- cations, those that address legislative issues, proposed bills, and amendments have been destroyed and will require ". . .weeks and weeks and weeks of data entry just to get back where we started. This is a disaster."

The culprit is, of course, a computer virus. The question on everyone's mind is, was this virus directed at Congress, or were they merely an anonymous and unfortunate victim?

I have an IBM PC clone at home. Technically it's an AT with a hard disk, so I'm not sure if that's an XT, and AXT, an XAT, an ATX or . . .well whatever. I use it to write a lot of my stories and then I can send the story to the computer at work for an overdiligent editor to make it fit within my allotted s.p.a.ce.

It never occurred to me that a computer could get sick.

I am, as we all are, used to our 'TV going on the Fritz', or 'Blowing a Fuse'. It seems like a lot of things blow: a gasket blows, a light bulb blows, a tire blows or blows out, the wind blows. I am sure that Thomas W. c.r.a.pper, the 19th century inven- tor of the flush toilet would not be pleased that in 1988 man has toasters and other cooking devices that 'c.r.a.p out'. The Phone Company 'screws up', the stock market 'goes to h.e.l.l in a handbas- ket' and VCR's 'work for s__t'.

It never occurred to me that a computer could get sick.

Computers are supposed to 'crash'. That means that either Aunt Tillie can't find the ON switch or her cat knocked it on the floor. Computers have 'fatal errors' which obviously means that they died and deserve a proper burial.

It never occurred to me that a computer could get sick.

In the last few weeks there have been a lot of stories about computers across the country getting ill. Sick, having the flu, breathing difficulty, getting rashes, itching, scratching them- selves . . .otherwise having a miserable time.

Let's look at the medical a.n.a.logy to the dreaded computer virus that indiscriminately attacks and destroys any computer with which it comes in contact.

Somewhere in the depths of the countryside of the People's Republic of China, a naturally mutated submicroscopic microbe has the nerve to be aerodynamically transferred to the smoggy air of Taiwan. Upon landing in Taipei, the microbe attaches itself to an impoverished octogenarian who lives in an overpopulated 1 room apartment over a fish store.

The microbe works its way into this guy's blood stream, unbek- nownst to him, and in a few days, he's sicker than a dog. But this microbe is smart, real smart. It has heard of antibiotics, and in the spirit of true Darwinism, it replicates itself before being killed off with a strengthened immunity. So, the microbe copies itself and when Kimmy Chen shakes hands with his custom- ers, some of them are lucky enough to receive an exact duplicate, clone if you will, of his microbe. Then they too, get ill.

The microbe thus propagates its species until the entire East Coast of the US has billions and trillions of identical microbes costing our fragile economy untold millions of dollars in sick pay.

However, the microbe is only so smart. After a while, the mi- crobe mutates itself into a benign chemical compound that no longer can copy itself and the influenza epidemic is over. Until next year when Asian Flu B shows up and the process begins all over again. (The same group of extremists who believe that the Tri-Lateral commission runs the world and Queen Elizabeth and Henry Kissinger are partners in the heroine trade think the AMA is behind all modern flu epidemics. No comment.)

The point of all of this diatribe is that computers can get sick too. With a virus.

Don't worry, mom. Your computer can't give you the flu anymore than your fish can get feline leukemia.

It all started years ago, before Wozniak and Apple and the PC.

Before personal computers there were mainframes; huge room sized computers to crunch on numbers. One day, years ago, Joe, (that's not a real name, it's changed to protect him) decided it would be great fun to play a prank on Bill, another programmer who worked at a big university. Joe wrote a little program that he put into Bill's big computer. Every time Bill typed the word 'ME' on his keyboard, the computer would take over. His video screen would fill up with the word 'YOU', repeating itself hundreds and thou- sands of times. Bill's computer would become useless.

That was called a practical joke to computer programmers. Joe and Bill both got a laugh out of it, and no harm was done. Then Bill decided to get back at Joe. He put a small program into Joe's big computer. Every day at precisely 3:00 P.M., a message appeared: 'Do Not Pa.s.s GO!'.

It was all good fun and became a personal challenge to Joe and Bill to see how they could annoy each other.

Word spread about the new game. Other graduate students at the university got involved and soon computer folks at Cal Tech, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and elsewhere got onto the bandwagon.

Thus was born the world's first computer disease, the virus.

This is Scott Mason. Using a typewriter.

November, 3 Years Ago Sunnyvale, California.

When Data Graphics Inc. went public in 1987, President and found- er Pierre Troubleaux, a nationalized American born in Paris momentarily forgot that he had sold his soul to achieve his success. The company, to the financial community known as DGI, was on the road to being in as much favor as Lotus or Microsoft.

Annual sales of $300 Million with a pre-tax bottom line of over $55 Million were cause celebre on Wall Street. The first public issues raised over $200 Million for less than 20% of the common stock. With a book value in excess of $1 Billion, preparation for a second offering began immediately after the first sold out in 2 hours.

The offering made Pierre Troubleaux, at 29, a rich man; a very rich man. He netted almost $20 Million in cash and another $100 Million in options over 5 years. No one objected. He had earned it. DGI was the pearl of the computer industry in a time of shake ups and shake outs. Raging profits, unbridled growth, phenomenal market penetration and superb management.

Perhaps the most unique feature of DGI, other than its Presi- dent's deal with the devil, was that it was a one product compa- ny. DGI was somewhat like Microsoft in that they both got rich and famous on one product. While Microsoft branched out from DOS into other product areas, DGI elected to remain a 1 product company and merely make flavors of its products available for other companies which then private labeled them under their own names.

Their software product was dubbed dGraph, a marketing abbreviated term for data-Graphics. Simply put, dGraph let users, especially novices, run their computers with pictures and icons instead of complex commands that must be remembered and typed. dGraph theoretically made IBM computers as easy to use as a Macintosh.

Or, the computer could be trained to follow instructions in plain English. It was a significant breakthrough for the industry.

DGraph was so easy to use, and so powerful in its abilities that it was virtually an instant success. Almost every computer manufacturer offered dGraph as part of its standard fare. Just as a computer needed DOS to function, it was viewed that you needed dGraph before you even loaded the first program. Operat- ing without dGraph was considered archaic. "You don't have dGraph?" "How can you use your computer without dGraph?" "I couldn't live without dGraph." "I'd be lost without dGraph."

The ubiquitous non-technical secretaries especially loved dGraph.

DGraph was taught at schools such as Katherine Gibbs and Secre- Temps who insisted that all its girls were fluent in its ad- vanced uses. You just can't run a office without it!

As much as anything in the computer industry is, dGraph was a standard. Pierre Troubleaux was unfortunately under the misim- pression that the success for DGI was his and his alone and that he too was a standard . . .a fixture. The press and computers experts portrayed to the public that he was the company's singu- lar genius, with remarkable technical apt.i.tude to see "beyond the problem to the solution . . .".

The official DGI biography of Pierre Troubleaux, upon close examination, reads like that of an inflated resume by a person applying for a position totally outside his field of expertise.

Completely unsuited for the job. But the media hype had rele- gated that minor inconsistency to old news.

In reality Troubleaux was a musician. He was an accomplished pianist who also played another twenty instruments, very, very well. By the age of ten he was considered something of a prodigy and his parents decided that they would move from Paris to New York, the United States, for proper schooling. Pierre's scholar- ships at Julliard made the decision even easier.