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some more concerned with making a fast buck, legally or illegally. The Chaos members refer to themselves as 'data travellers', rather than as hackers, but they all share the same obsession with computers and all subscribe to a vague notion of 'hacker ethics'. Their own unique understanding of that term is that they have a mission to test, or penetrate, the security of computer systems. Early Chaos Clubbers were allied to the VAXbusters, the group that sought to penetrate the security of VAX computers around the world. The Club's first brush with notoriety, though, occurred in 1984, when they broke into Btx (Bildschirmtext), an on-line text and information service much like Britain's Prestel. In 1986 they captured the media's attention again when, after the meltdown of the Soviet nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, they provided alternative information on contamination levels by hacking into government computers and releasing the information they found. Their findings were sufficiently at odds with official reassurances to make them the darlings of Germany's Green movement.

The annual conferences of the Chaos Club were held in Hamburg, always in December. They attracted the cream of the German hacker community, as well as observers from Europe and elsewhere. The gatherings were always well covered by the media and, without doubt, were watched by the local police with some interest. The first conference had been held in 1984, since when they had been themed, with a topic chosen that was certain to excite media attention. In 1986 the theme was computer viruses.

At the time little was known about viruses; the conference organizers hoped piously that the 'publicity given to the subject by the club would 'dispel myths'. The organizers also declared: 'The problem isn't computer viruses, but the dependence on technology.' They blamed the writing of viruses on 'bad social conditions for programmers'.

Without doubt the star performer in 1986 was Ralf Burger. For one thing, he had actually written a virus, which in those days was something of a feat - few in Burger's audience would have even seen a virus, never mind written one. To prove that his virus, Virdem, would work, Burger handed out copies among the two to three hun-

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