Hello everybody
I'm very happy to write my first message here (well, unless I had registered previously with another name and forgot it, which might happen) about +HCU and the "plus" symbol. I'm happy because I always like to remember "good old times", as probably anyone does, and _these_ were _my_ good old times.
I'm also not sure about what kind of flames this message might start but hey, I trust in the board moderators
For the most polemic ones, understand that everything you'll read is written the way I witnessed it, and I just wanted you to know my thoughts about it. I'm not writing as an authority, because I'm not an authority at all: I'm an old cracker who (probably) cannot even rebuild a IAT, but who thinks that rebuilding a IAT doesn't solve many problems, while reversing does.
If anyone has already read this story on my website, please pardon me: I liked that so much I've decided to directly cut'n'paste a great part of it. Finally, if anyone of the old (but not SO old) school has anything to add to this story, I'd be glad to read it.
A long time ago, reversing wasn't called reversing. That was mainly because
people didn't reverse programs, but most of all because they didn't reverse
reality at all. Some of them had very good technical skills, but used them to
become famous, or even to make money, just by unprotecting programs. And even
if sometimes, thinking about those days, I wish that some of those gurus had
spread their knowledge instead of keeping everything for theirselves, now I
just think that it just wasn't the right moment. So, that period remains for
me as a Golden Era of Myth, where I could go out and buy a magazine with tons
of pirated videogames, and spend the rest of the day playing with them, good
as the original ones even if their names had always been changed... All I
learned from the beautiful intros of many games was that this art was called
_cracking_, and that some "elite" groups mastered that art so well that they
could unprotect almost any software.
Years later, a good and powerful master (whose real identity is still -and
probably will remain- unknown) decided to share his cracking knowledge with
others. Well, "with others" is not right: he wanted to share it with
_everyone_. That's why he decided to write and spread on the Internet a
collection of tutorials, in which you could learn from the basics of DOS
cracking to the standard of bar codes, reading something about Windows
protections and reality reversing too.
What was reality reversing? Well, it was just the same techniques you use for
software reversing, but applied to everything else which surrounds you in the
"real" world (how much will this world be the real one is another thing we
could speak about, but that's another story). And this doesn't mean you can
patch a jump in a person, or that you can debug a supermarket, at least not
with the same tools you use with a computer: this means, instead, that you
can use the same _mind_processes_ and _rational_techniques_ to crack a
program, reverse a piece of news inside a newspaper or buy a SBLive paying it
as if it was a SB16 (someone really did it just playing for a while with
barcodes...). And if the rational part of your mind still isnt' enough, just
follow the Zen way!
This great master was the first one I heard speaking about Zen Cracking, and
this is an idea nobody will ever be able to delete from my mind. Even now,
after so much inactivity, when I happen to crack something I sometimes still
can _feel_ the code and, as it happens when a Zen student reaches
illumination, I understand in a moment how everything works. If it happened
to you too, you can understand what I mean.
The man of Zen Cracking was +ORC, the Old Red Cracker, master for _all_ the
"pluses" you might meet in your life. If I remember well, he decided to use
that plus before his name to make it harder to find with search engines...
Anyway, all the people who wear that plus are either his students or have
decided to use it as a sign of respect to that wise man.
I was talking about students... Well, yes, because he didn't just upload his
tutorials and let them teach all the hard stuff for him, but he created an
online school for those who really wanted to learn the art of cracking. The
name of this school was "High Cracking University", and you might probably
still find something about it on the net just by searching for "+HCU" or
"+HCUckers", which is the name of its students.
I'm not one of the "first generation" students, because I reached the school
only one year after +ORC opened it. And while I was studying to solve the
"strainer" (which, IMO, was probably the easiest one in the whole history of
the university), people like +swann (the first student who published a tute
at +fravia's), +fravia (who created a website which has been a starting point
for most of the reversers you can meet now) and +gthorne (another mighty
reverser whose page has been the home of the great +orcpacks, and whose name
is still present in the +HCU*nix messageboard) were working together and
creating new tutorials which would have become guides for the next generation
of crackers.
I joined the +HCU during its second year of life, and published my first tute
on +fravia's after a few days. But the story of the +HCU is another story,
and I'll tell it another time. Since then, many years passed and I joined
other groups of reversers. I learned many new things from +HCUckers and from
other people (a big hug goes to all RingZero friends), but I still remember
what +ORC wrote just a few weeks after my admission...
I leave you with +his words: please read this mail, think that it was
October 1997 and look with your eyes how much he had already understood of
the future.
Now that you know the story, go and tell it to your kids. And if you feel
you respect this great man, feel free to put a plus before your name and/or
drop a 'hi +ORC' here in this forum (if the moderators agree ^__^). I'm
sure that wherever +he is now, if +he likes to browse his students' sites
from time to time, +he'll be happy to read this
P.S. I'm sorry I had to cut away the mail +ORC wrote, but the message was getting far too long. If you like, I might post it as a separate message or you can download it from one of old fravia's mirrors.
P.P.S.: I found one URL to +ORC's mail:
http://hackjaponaise.cosm.co.jp/archives/websites/fravia/newuni.htm
