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EPILOGUE

New viruses are being spawned every day, in the most unlikely corners of the world. In Bangkok, for example, one programmer set up his computer to produce 600 viruses an hour, each guaranteed undetectable by any of the scanning programs that are supposed to offer protection. That single machine now produces viruses faster than they can be analysed and catalogued — even if all the world's virus researchers dedicated themselves to disassembling them. To date, the Thai bugs aren't included in any virus count because they've yet to reach the West. But they may start seeping through to Europe and North America within the next few months.

Viruses from Thailand have a ready-made means of travelling. In Bangkok, visitors from the industrialized countries often shop for computer programs at one of the two dozen or so specialist software shops in Panthip Plaza or the Marboonkroong Center. The latest Western programs are available for 500 baht (£10), often less than 10 per cent of the price in the developed countries. The software comes complete with manuals, often photocopies or cheap reprints. There's no attempt to pass these off as the originals: the sellers aren't pirates, simply businessmen working on 5 per cent margins.

Why pay more?

But buyers often carry home an unwanted extra. Some 80 per cent of the programs also contain a virus. Exactly which virus is hard to say: there are so many in Thailand that everyone has lost track, including the virus writers.

There is also an increasing number of virus exchange bulletin boards, with probably twenty or thirty in operation at the beginning of 1992. (Bangkok has one, called the Virus Museum.) These serve to carry viruses around the world and make them available to most anyone. All the boards work the same way: the latest viruses, guaranteed undetectable by any known scanner, are kept in a restricted area. There are often sixty or more. And, for the virus writer, source codes for many viruses are also available. The source code allows programmers to create variants by changing the activation date or altering the payload.

An Italian virus writer called Cracker Jack operates his own virus lab, modifying Bulgarian bugs, often producing two or three new knock-offs each week. He gives them names: Antichrist, Bad Taste,

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