The whole misprint from @vxunderground made me think of an untold part of VX history and about one of the rarest VX ezines to ever exist.

Fun fact and #story time:

One of the rarest ezines, Team Necrosis Vol 1 featured a submission from a relatively unknown virus author by the name of Painter6.

Turns out that Painter6 was actually David Smith, the Melissa virus author, and he was working undercover with federal law enforcement to expose the VX scene and later bring down coderz dot net.

When law enforcement found a pre-release copy of the zine and his viral submission, it violated his agreement to not write virus code while working as a snitch, in addition they were worried it would blow his cover.

After having him withdraw his submission, he attempted to convince people to delete the early copies of the ezine and withdraw their submissions, claiming that AV companies were leaked a copy of the zine.

To back this up, Painter6 secretly submitted his own virus to AV so they would have a signature of it.
Scanning the zine specifically threw up a signature for Win.Painter6 virus.

For months the scene banned all members of Team Necrosis, thinking they were selling VX to AV companies (like an infamous 29A member got caught doing). Massive deletion of the zine occurred throughout the scene.

This truth was all eventually brought to light in court a year later when Evul, the owner of coderz dot net was brought to court over distributing virus code. Evul was actually found to be not guilty and after the court case, had his lawyers get copies of this evidence and sent it to the entire VX scene.

Unfortunately Team Necrosis never recovered but the members eventually were pardoned and invited into other prominent VX groups: NuKE, SLAM, No Mercy, and Metaphase.

Team Necrosis Vol 1 later became the basis for Coderz Vol 2 and was a relative success as one of the last big zine releases from the VX scene. The original TN Vol 1 is still considered a top tier item to have in the VX scene.

Source: I was the main writer of Team Necrosis Vol 1 and an editor for coderz dot net zines. I don't even have a copy of it anymore, but id be happy to validate anyone who might have a rare copy.

I was later accepted as the last member of both NuKE and SLAM before they were dissolved 3 years later.

#VX #infosecHistory #history #malware #FuckPainter6 #intro #stories #respect #darknetdiaries #infosecRant

#infosecRant Here’s my life today. The company has, rightly, implemented a load of protections with mobile application management. However, so far I have downloaded MS Authenticator and signed in, then signed in again, then completed MFA, then verified my sign in attempt by phone, then in a browser I’ve signed in and then completed MFA, then been asked to add further MFA which failed and now I have to start again.

All I want to do is read a document on my iPad. I could simply forward it to my personal email and be done. But that goes against infosec policy and I’m really trying to comply but honestly this bs makes it so difficult.

It’s completely unreasonable to expect people to jump through these hoops. They’ll either simply not do the work or break the rules in order to do the work.

Which is it to be? Certainly adding ever more layers of authentication crap is not the way. I really, really hate it.