"There will be thousands of viruses. Thousands of them. I have to imagine by now that every program in America is infected with ten different viruses. There is only one way to stop them all. Never turn on your computers.
"You see, most virus programmers are searching for immediate gratification. They write one and want it to spread real quick and then see it blow up. So most amateur virus builders are disappointed in the results because they don't have patience. But we, I had patience.
"To maximize the effects of viruses, you have to give them time. Time to spread, to infect. Many of the viruses that you will experience are years old. The older viruses are much cruder than those made recently. We learned over time to build better vi- ruses. Our old ones have been dormant for so long, their conta- gion is complete and they will be just as effective.
"We have built and installed the greatest viruses of all time. Every PC will probably be dead in months if not weeks, unless you take my advice. There are also VAX viruses, VMS viruses, SUN viruses, we even built some for Cray supercomputers, but we don't expect much damage from them."
The Spook's next comments were just as startling.
"The blackmail operation was a sham, but a terrific success. It wasn't for the money. No one ever collected any money, did they? It was pure psychological warfare. Making people distrust their computers, distrust one another because the computer makes them look like liars. That was the goal. The money was a diversion- ary tactic.
"Part of any attack is the need to soften the enemy and terrorism is the best way to get quick results. By the time the first viruses came along, whoa! I bet half the MIS directors in the country don't know whether they're coming or going."
According to the Spook, he designed the attack with several armies to be used for different purposes.
One for Propaganda, one for Infiltration and Infection, one for Engineering, one for Communications, and another for Distribution and another for Manufacturing. At the pinnacle was Homosoto acting as Command and Control.
"I didn't actually infect any computers myself. We had teams of
Groundhogs all too happy to do that for us."