The AF/91 Virus Hoax (E293)

targeting the printer makes sense when you want to hyper target specific computers! :3

If this printer's rockin' then don't come a-knockin'

I think there's s non zero chance that the US did compromise Iran's computers but put out the story of af91 in order to confuse/ bury how they actually did, wouldn't be the first time they lied in pr for that purpose

A recent example of people collectively joking about something silly was a couple of years ago. Black people on twitter were joking about getting powers on dec 21st. It was a fun time being on twitter that week.

Great! Now I have to watch Hackers again. HACK THE PLANET!

In defense of the printer hacking; printers are notoriously vulnerable to hacking because they hold access to things like file servers, wifi/network connections and even just knowing what they’re being used for.

Ah... the 90s. Not gonna lie, I miss those days.

my twitter for you page is mostly pictures of fish

So, thanks for the interesting vid! There’s nothing to do with Julian dates (sorry not sorry Julian). 01April91 was the 91st day of the year 1991. Computers keep dates in weird ways sometimes 🙀 Second, printers then mostly interfaced to computers using either serial or parallel ports, both of which were bidirectional. It’s certainly true that most older printers only needed unidirectional comms. by the late 80s/early 90s printers were starting to be more feature-rich, and driver software would need to be installed to provide the computer the right software "hooks" to communicate with the printer. Printers then often used EPROMs (erasable read only memory) - I wrote lots of software that I’d “burn” into an EPROM. I could make things do new stuff that way. Put the appropriate extra code into the EPROM, the driver checks for it, and if there loads it into the computer. The drivers were generally supplied on a floppy disk with the printer. 1991 was a little early to have drivers that were downloaded from the Internet (the Internet really didn't exist then). That driver could contain an extra bit of code that when accessed by the computer could pull the hidden code in the EPROM into the computer, and affect the computer’s behavior, at that moment or at some later time. Any “missile control system” would likely need to know latitude and longitude in order to do something. Dunno - don’t know what “missile control system” they bought. 😹 With the right software hack in the printer, that hack could search the computer’s memory for places where position were kept (back then, there was little attempt to obfuscate things like that, the computer was considered safe) and modify the coordinates. Fun times! While I’m not saying that the AF91 hoax wasn’t a hoax, it was certainly a plausible story. Gantz may have heard a rumor, over overheard a conversation, we can’t know. But any clever computer-literate person back then could have seen a way to make something happen. Maybe it was still a little science fictiony, but it sounds like an interesting hack.

can you guys please do an episode on the O9A? (order of nine angels) it, like this virus, also started off as a “joke”

A=1, F=6. AF91 . 1+6+9+1 = 17. The facts don’t lie. This was a Q operation

"My computing life" siiighhhhh

This is all silly BS but as some have pointed out. Some is plausible. What I assume they mean by digging up cable and “inserting” the virus is that you could, in theory, dig up a fiber optic cable, cut it and then insert a device similar to a router or repeater to join the cables back. That device could route the traffic through and could, in theory, also spread malicious code on a network. This of course assumes you have intricate knowledge of the network setup, the PCs and OS’s in use and that there are zero security countermeasures to block the code. These days the NSA and CIA just uses you unsecured smart toaster

Gary Pounder lol

Solvang prerends to be Danish, not Dutch!

Anyone received their order of any of the new merch?

Fantastic episode! Agreeing with probably more than one other commenter, yes, an expert guest would have helped. The funny thing for me though- as a GenXer who volunteered at 17 (in 1989 for the National Guard) and then again at 30 (as a medic on active duty) *and* as a self-taught veteran of Silicon Valley with tech experience going back to a TI 99/4a- was hearing y'all stumble through some stuff. But you made it through and (as a Patron) I can only imagine that characteristic may have lead to more engagement from your listeners. Again, great stuff and really looking forward to your coverage of election related misinfo- of which I imagine there will be quite a bit- both foreign influenced and home grown. (And I sincerely hope Julien survives it all!)

Nice AYWKUBTTOTD reference by Julien. Those who know, know.

This episode needed an expert guest.

Guys, I don’t know where to share this- I just saw what looks like an mspaint animated series in my reels on instagram from an account @dawnofusseries. I think it’s advertising an anunnaki origin explanation series of videos- it’s right In the sweet spot: incomprehensible artistic choices, yet watchable- and I have so many questions it has slightly better quality than a bored ape movie, with the script quality of a Christian cartoon- plus they keep literally cutting to an animated Joe Rogan interview. Like the audio from a Joe Rogan video clip just with Joe in his studio animated in their mspaint style. it has 5k+ views, and it looks like there might be full clips on YouTube?- I haven’t had time to look; I need to get the word out lol. I want an episode about this specific thing I found haha- maybe an auto Q

Solvang is the Bluesky of Twitterfornia is a great premise. Jake I smell a screenplay!

Biological notes for book of podcaster observations: Julian thinks 2K is a game that comes out every so often. Unclear as of yet if this is, or is not that. More research needed

I had a laptop in 91. Trying to download solataire would shut my computer down as described here.

The printer source is totally realistic today. '91 Iraqi printers, though? No. I captured Iraqi intel records in '03. A few MB were stored on magnetic tapes the size of car tires. It's like hacking the Flintstones.

This reminds me of a yYoutube video i just watched by the channel PeopleMakeGames on wargaming, which has become a cottage industry recently, due to the influx of military funding, and has also inspired TTRPGs and subsequently videogames, and those videogames in turn inspired wargames again, as militaries often just buy the commercial version of videogames and mod it to the suit their scenarios.

Great episode! I can see why neocons would be so into this hoax. They wanted to rebrand a slaughter as a “heroic victory” (through tech if nothing else.) Truth be told, Iraq never had a sophisticated or effective air defense system. Despite years of claims about the Iraqi “menace”- Iraq’s military was shot after a decade of war against Iran. It never had the vaunted capabilities so widely attributed to it by the press before the war. The ensuing Gulf War was a slaughter. The result of the war, a lopsided US victory, could be read not as a “heroic success” but rather as a massacre. If you can claim that “Iraq was strong, but we cleverly negated their strength” then you can still say the Gulf War was heroic. If you can do that, while sowing fear about US capabilities, then why not spread the lie?

I think you missed the biggest motivation the Air Force guy had for spreading this hoax. The main thing on his mind would be internal battles for funding and resources. The people who pick the winners aren’t very bright, have no particular talent for detecting bullshit, and are easily influenced by media buzz.

Pitch: A virus that makes Jake’s Clippy ask, “Do you have to make?”

This ep. drops on the very same day I have to buy a new printer!?! Coincidence??? …probably.

Slutty French printers is definitely a thing!

I wonder if the AIDS epidemic had a hand in how this was received by the public. People didn’t really have a grasp of computer viruses yet, but they had a better (if still very flawed) understanding of biological viruses. Hence the “mutating out of control” and infection through Just “touching an exposed wire”.

Julian's immigrant status confirmed: he said the OED instead of Webster's dictionary in the joke about the article sounding like a shitty first essay.

“Not my hand-phone!” Huge laugh from this one.

PAPA Travis lol

Twelve Years a Slimer

Hate to say it, but you’re wrong about a virus for a printer being ridiculous. Sure, in 1991 it was, and of course this particular story is BS anyway, but these days, a printer is not a bad attack vector or target. Excellent for espionage in particular. You act as though it’s somehow self-evidently silly based on… what? See stuxnet for some real world wizardry and how far actual nation-state intelligence services go, how much ingenuity and effort they apply - then reconsider what’s “ridiculous”. As for messing with fiber connections, see some of Snowden’s leaked docs - which, like stuxnet, are far from recent - just for proof that it’s something the NSA very much does. No, they don’t go dig up a cable under cover of darkness and poke a hole to let the bits out, but they’re very good at tapping fiber connections in lots of ways. It’s literally their job. Again yeah, this old April Fool’s story’s nonsense, but also just ahead of its time in some ways. It’s closer to reality than that clip from “Hackers” you used as the auto-q (no shade on Hackers, I love that trash).

wait the same John Ganz who wrote When the Clock Broke?

Travis....stop resisting...join us down here....in the sewage. Travissssss.... Oh, and bring your handphone.

Omg it’s my time I am the first?