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                                The Last Imperor
                          The Embodiment of Ignorance

Note:  To understand the motivation for this malicious attack upon Imperial
and his ex-system, Pyrotechnic Suicide, please read the editorial entitled
"An Exercise in Deceit" contained earlier in this magazine.

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The first strike against Imperial's chance of survival was that he ran a
completely unsecure and backdoor filled software such as QUiVER.  The 
second and more useful strike he had against him was that he was a complete
and total idiot.  This made things much easier for me.

The first thing I did was to acquire an account on his system with moderate
access.  This was done quite easily, as not one question was asked of me 
other than those on the pre-fabricated generic infoforms which came with
the software.  You know the ones, "Define THG:", the really hack/phreak
type infoforms. 

The second thing I did was to list his users and find out which ones had
adequate access to be able to enter the sysop menu.  This was quite easy
as Pyrotechnic Suicide and its users are more than happy to answer any 
and all questions you may throw at them.  After finding an account with
sysop access, I made use of a little known login password proprietary to
that wonderful QUiVER software.  Unfortunately for me, or fortunately
depending on how you look at it, the sysop was home at the time I did this.
He really made it hard for me and all, supplying the sysop menu password
only after I explained to him how my "mom threw my password list away".

The account I had chosen to use, Seventh Son, also known as Wes Talbert,
was an especially good choice on my part.  After Imperial spent about
5 minutes or so telling me how connected that "I" was, he offered to let
me join EXiLED - or begged me to rather.  I somewhat grudgingly agreed,
saying that it would be ok, but that I would be giving up a very 
senior position in RUSH to become a very junior member in EXiLED.  This
is when he offered to alter the circle of power in EXiLED.  Instead of
the leadership triumvirate consisting of Deadpool, Imperial, and Aux 1,
he offered to, with the help of Deadpool, change that consistency to
Deadpool, Imperial, and Seventh Son.  It came to me as quite a surprise
that Aux 1, who is in my opinion the only EXiLED member who has ANY clue,
would be removed from his senior position and demoted to floor scrubber
simply because Seventh Son, who is mainly known as a wares pup anarchy
boy, wanted to join the group.  In any case, I was informed as to all
of the neat-o beat-o tricks of EXiLED and told about this devious
little device called the Shadowbox which is "really, man, fuckin awesome".
Unfortunately, no one seems to know exactly what the box does or how to 
make or get one yet, including all of the EXiLED members who supposedly 
created it (to see actual schematics stolen from EXiLED on the Shadowbox, 
look under the Various Files section).

Now, after chatting with him for about 45 minutes, and leaving him 
thoroughly convinced that I was who I said I was, I offered him a piece
of software, Thunderbyte Anti-Virus Professional, which he had requested
in a message on his board.  He said he would very much like to have this
software, and being the congenial person that I am, I provided it to him.
I also inquired as to what current virus protection he used, and he was
glad to inform me that he used F-Protect and TBAV TSRs.  I suddenly 
remembered that when I installed TBAV Pro on my system for the first time,
it found itself and another TSR virus scanner in memory and messed up two
directories on my hard drive.  Of course, I wouldn't want this to happen
to him, so being the nice guy that I am, I made sure that he would remove
all TSR virus scanners from memory before running TBAV Pro.  After he
thanked me profusely for this bit of information, I decided that it was
the appropriate time for me to end this call - especially in light of the
fact that he was so anxious to install TBAV.

I called back approximately 30 minutes later to find the board still 
functioning properly.  Needless to say, I was a bit upset, but I figured 
that I would try to make the best of it.  The first thing I did was to 
page him for a chat to ascertain whether or not he was sitting there 
watching every move I made.  He had previously entered chat after I paged
him about .0001ms after I hit enter.  This time, he didn't answer.  I was
confident that he was not there, so I conveniently made my way to the 
sysop menu, using the password which he had so kindly provided to his 
"trusted cosysop", and proceeded to capture his user files.  After this
was done, I noticed a command which said "Directory Editor".  Well..
Whaddya know kids.  This was actually a file sub editor which allowed me
to change the file area pathnames.  After downloading his actual user
files, his personal BBS registration, and a few other choice financial
records from what was presumably his father's Lotus program,  he caught
me trying to download his terminate phone directory.   He interrupted me,
broke into chat, and this time it took me a good 2 whole minutes to 
convince him that, hey, I was just checking out his security for him.
He did get a little suspicious and ask me for his girlfriend's first name,
but since I had just stolen his user files, which she was in, it was no
trouble at all pacifying him.  He let me proceed with a warning not to
download any other personal files that he had.  Of course I agreed and
continued downloading his terminate directory.  He interrupted the 
transfer once again, and said "hey, I said stop that!".  I gave up with
the terminate directory,  and deleted it while he watched.  I don't think
he was aware at this point that I had already downloaded about 20 other
files including his telix phone directory.  I made some lame excuse 
about needing to go get something to eat, and he wished his newest
EXiLED affiliate a good night.

Approximately 4 hours later, after telling everyone I knew what a total
idiot Imperial was, and how he was going to die soon, I called his system
back.  He answered, but was in terminal mode.  Seems as though he was 
dialing out to find some sort of quiver utility to fix a userbase.  It
seems someone had deleted his.  He informed me that he saw in the log
where I had downloaded his user files and asked me to please re-upload
them.  He didn't seem upset about this at all, as I was one of his EXiLED
brothers, not to mention a co-sysop.  Little did he know.  He also asked
me if I could check the ZIP file I uploaded to him with TBAV in it and
see if it had any errors.. When I inquired as to why, he told me that when
he had run it, it gave him some sort of memory error (the string which is 
displayed upon running the first virus).  I said, whoa, wait a minute.
My zip was corrupted.  Let me send you that TBAVPRO.COM file over again.
I did, he ran it, and the rest is history.  I guess the second virus worked
a little faster than the first...  

                                   -Splice

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This is the actual transcript of the ensuing conversation between Splice and
his royal, and emotionally distraught, hindass Imperial that took place the
day after:

Splice:    Yo Bobby?
Imperial:  hey...
Splice:    Hey this is Splice.. I mean, uhh... Seventh son.. hey man what's 
           up?
Imperial:  yeah whatever.. <sniffle sniffle>
Splice:    So how'd ya get virused little buddy?
Imperial:  well i don't know... it's all gone.. <sob> ..all fucked up.. 
Splice:    well.. <sarcasm> you know I'm Immortus don't you?  I mean you can 
           retaliate and all.... hehehe..
Imperial:  <with sincerity> yeah I know...
Splice:    you can come brick my house or something.. whatever you like, hehe!
Imperial:  No we don't resort to senseless violence <tear falls from cheek>
Splice:    oh ok then you'll be interested to hear that your financial 
           records that were in your lotus directory are safe and sound...
Imperial:  yeah sure.. <sniff>
Splice:    All those wordperfect files were interesting reading also..
Imperial:  that directory wasn't even there man..
Splice:    if you say so.. anyway, would you like me to give brandon a
           copy of the capture of you offering Seventh Son Aux 1's EXiLED 
           position or would you like to do it yourself?
Imperial:  whatever man...
Splice:    HEY MAN!  GET ME ONE OF THOSE COOL SHADOWBOXES! THEY'RE AWESOME!
           <hangs up>

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