Realm-Bleed

USER: Horatio | POSTED 8-6-1990 16:11:21

SUBJECT: Realm-Bleed

Just a heads up; the realm-bleed bug is getting worse. I've just had a phone call from some of the other SysOps on the exchange, and the weird characters it creates are showing up on their systems as well. Raven - you mentioned that you recognized some of them. Is this possibly some kind of magical computer virus?

************************ * "There are more * * things in heaven and * * earth, Horatio, than * * are dreamt of in * * your philosophy." * * * * -Hamlet * * Act 1, Scene 5 * * ---------------------* * Horatio * * System Operator * * Threshold BBS * ************************

USER: Tetraktys | POSTED 8-6-1990 16:14:21

SUBJECT: RE: Realm-Bleed (Horatio)

Ah! I had noticed these glyphs at the bottom of the boards, and thought them a decorative homage to the ancient sciences. But you say that they have manifested upon their own? Interesting. Computers, being machines that manipulate numbers, properly fall within the domain of arithmancy; I shall endeavour to calculate the cause of this anomaly. In order to do so, I will require more information about the configuration and alignment of the systems - you mentioned an exchange? Can you describe that?

* / \ * — * / \ / \ * — * — * / \ / \ / \ * — * — * — * Tetraktys

USER: Horatio | POSTED 8-6-1990 16:23:13

SUBJECT: RE: RE: Realm-Bleed (Horatio) (Tetraktys)

The exchange is a network of BBSes that forward updates to each other, mostly hosted at different universities. It's why there are so many local numbers that can reach the BBS - without the exchange, anyone who wasn't near my campus would have to pay huge long distance charges to dial in. With the exchange, each node keeps local copies of the message bases that are commonly accessed from it, and will forward updates back to the home system for that BBS. It's not perfect, but it does a pretty good job of expanding access.

When I first saw the realm-bleed bug, I thought it was a bad node in the exchange, sending data that was bizarrely malformed. That's actually why I called it realm-bleed - it looked to me like updates were bleeding through from other BBS's. But I couldn't track it down - it was like it was coming from somewhere outside the exchange entirely. And now it has started showing up in other systems on the exchange, and it has me thinking it might be a virus? And then I thought about how Raven recognized the symbols - symbols that are *not* in the ASCII set and shouldn't be able to be displayed - and I wondered if there was such a thing as a *magical* computer virus.

************************ * "There are more * * things in heaven and * * earth, Horatio, than * * are dreamt of in * * your philosophy." * * * * -Hamlet * * Act 1, Scene 5 * * ---------------------* * Horatio * * System Operator * * Threshold BBS * ************************

USER: Tetraktys | POSTED 8-6-1990 19:20:41

SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Realm-Bleed (Horatio) (Tetraktys) (Horatio)

That is an adequate beginning, but I shall require much more data if I am to calculate the origin of this malefic progression, as a so-called *computer virus* would be properly described in the ancient sciences. I will need the number of systems within the exchange, their precise locations, and the date each was initially connected to the rest. Precision will be key here - if only approximate information can be provided, the resulting answer shall be correspondingly imperfect.

* / \ * — * / \ / \ * — * — * / \ / \ / \ * — * — * — * Tetraktys