I posted this once a long time ago, but I was prowling around the web and found something about it, and decided to post it again. If you look at this old issue of Phrack magazine, an mid-to-late 1980s hacker e-zine, and search for "Silicon Central," you'll find my old BBS. Apparently, at the 1992 National Computer Security Association's 1st Annual Conference on Viruses, a "hit list" of BBSs that circulated viruses was distributed. You can see my old BBS among them below:
... +1-717-367-3501 Night Eyes +1-818-831-3189 Pirate's Cove +1-901-756-4756 Silicon Central +1-916-729-2112 The Welfare Department ...
It's so cool to think that my BBS actually appeared in Phrack, even if it was under such scary circumstances. I did use to distribute viruses, but I'm not sure if I had a lot or a little relative to other BBSs (it's been so long). The number "400" is in my head, and so I'm thinking I had approximately that many on my harddrive for distribution.
But it was actually around this time (1992) that I closed that BBS down. My harddrive crashed one day, taking Silicon Central with it. It truly sucked to lose that site. I had installed a mail distributing software called "Frontdoor" on it and had begun a loosely affiliated group called "The Elite Corporation" which had, at one point, around 15 or so members. All message boards on my site were therefore linked to the other boards, and every night at midnight, FrontDoor would call each of the sites, collect and organize the daily mail, and redistribute it to each BBS. What it offered many of us was a way of consolidating our mail and communication in a time when only University professors had VAX accounts and access to Telnet. The sheer stupidity of it was that I used phreaked calling card codes to do the calling each night for me. It was therefore only a matter of time before I got busted, but in those days, I tended to be even more myopic and short-sighted than I am now.
I had that running, though, for around 4 months, and let me tell you, it was really glorious. I could feel the potential of such a service for the other BBSs. And, what was cool, is that I could see the network effects happening in real time. With each new member joining, the value of the service grew, such that there were actually increasing returns to membership. In other words, I could see in that little experiment the value of something like an Internet which could link everyone, costlessly, and provide speedy access to information and communication to participants. Before, I had to log on to every single BBS, check my mail, and participate in message boards, and while I didn't complain, in retrospect, that was incredibly time consuming (albeit fun).
Anyway, like I said, the old IBM PS/2 Model 30, with its 20 meg harddrive, its 8088 processor, its VGA monitor, its 640K memory, and its 2400 baud modem just --poof-- broke on me one day. The whole thing crashed and with it Silicon Central. When I read something like this, it makes me thing about how good for me it was that that happened.
Posted by scott at January 21, 2004 10:36 AM | TrackBackWow. I was a little active in my local BBS communities about ten years ago, as a little nerdy kid who watched Dr. Who when everyone was watching The Simpsons. Brings back memories.
But, you distributed viruses (virii?)? What for? I understand that coding a virus helps one to better understand the things you can do with the language, and there is the allure of a bit of malicious fun. What was your interest in it?
Posted by: Charles R at January 25, 2004 02:53 PMI have no idea, honestly. I just gradually collected them, and over time, had a large collection. And, all of the phreak/hack/phrack BBSs that I frequented distributed viruses, so to get traffic, I tried to make that one of the features of my site. Plus, I was kind of caught up in the "outlaw" aspect of hacking and all of that. I never was any good at hacking, but I thrived on phracking and distributing viruses, because it was one of the few things I was actually able to do. Not that I was really "doing" anything by simply hosting 400+ viruses on my measly computer, but it at least made me feel like, at the time, I provided a valuable service to other hackers and allowed me the pleasure of feeling like I belonged to that extended community.
Posted by: scott cunningham at January 26, 2004 08:25 AM