tInterview with a CrackertRokDaZone & Shanetfpc01s2f1 INTERVIEW WITH A CRACKERc02 by RokDaZone & Shane/Crux^Bad Karma c03 The legal c04DemoScenec03 as we know it today has often been confused with illegal crackers, Sceneparties were understood as gatherings for hackers. Ridiculous in our eyes maybe, still we can't deny that the roots of any computer Scene in our sense lay in f4illegalf1 circles, when crackers formed groups and used the medium of intros for propaganda; thus earning f4moneyf1. When we as diskmag for the legal Scene give a focus about the structures and history of an active group from the illegal sector, we do not try to c04glorifyc03 cracking at all. It is an attempt to put the pieces back together and near the history of the Scene as a c04wholec03. It can also be seen as a demontage of the mystification that crackers as much as f4hackersf1 achieved. We met c02Shanec03, organizer of the Swiss-based f4crackerf1 group for an f4exclusivef1 interview. Please note that there is a legal section active under the same groupname, which only has f4loosef1 connection to the illegal team! c02Shanec03, who will remain anonymous for obvious reasons, is a 19 year-old basketball fanatic, who appears to be rather unspectacular. Not much of the modern Robin Hood or the pale nerd which media report about. Instead he is a lively character who favours Jungle-music instead of hacking into c04Pentagon-systemsc03. He calls himself the father of the group for being the one f4"all members always come weeping to with their problems."f1 Asked for the background of the future, Shane knows to tell that c04Cruxc03 itself was founded by himself and another person named c02Sidc03 two years ago, while the cooperation with c04Bad Karmac03 is quite a new thing. f4"End of february this year we started the project, founders were c02Crispc03, c02Frankyc03 and myself." f1This three are also the organizers of the team. f4"while Franky concentrates writing all the internal mags, packing the news together and keeping a overall view, it is me who looks out for new skilled members, but all three leader have to give their ok if someone wants to join and all three leaders getting always contacted when we are about to release something." "We had and still have some prominent seniors in cBK," f1he is proud to tell, f4"c02Fury,c03 trader maniac from c02Prestigec03, c02Felonc03, he used to be a skilled trainermaker in c02Hoodlumc03, c02The Frog Budsc03, a small demo group in French, they coded all the cracktros for c02PARADOXc03 and c02Zulu & Greyc03 are also for sure living legends."f1 Even c02Chromagc03 the famous Amiga musician also was a member for exactly three days f4"After that he was forced to leave us, but that's a story for itself."f1 "WE ALWAYS HAD WARS" c03 Latest since the highly emotional wars betweenc04 Quartexc03 andc04 Paranoimiac03 or c04Devilsc03 and c04Angelsc03 in the late eighties and early nineties, wars belong to the daily bread of cracking groups. The fight who is the fastest and best hereby is not only a matter of prestige, but often also of financial meaning. Only the best and fastest one would be able to f4sellf1 their products so statements of being superior could go to the basics of a cracking team. Also Crux^Bad Karma make no exception: f4"Yes sure, guess every living groups had some scandals in their history, we always had wars with our direct rivals such as c02Floodc03 or nowadays c02Digital Corruptionc03, its a open secret that we don`t like each other but I think it was, and still is, always in a healthy frame, it just pushes up all groups to take more care about the releases." "Our philosophy? Hmmm .. good question!" f1 he stops for some seconds of consideration. f4 "We don`t have a written philosophy in our group, but I can tell you my own one. For me, the Scene is just like a second world. You have your talent and your career, which you have to work (hard) for, without doing anything you will stay on a very low-based level, but as higher you climb the stairs you get more fun in it, and sometimes you are really addicted, sometimes you want to lay down, as I said, just like the real life! And it still keeps me motivated to lead such a big group."f1 c01 "WE`LL KEEP FINDING FASTER WAYS TO GET THE WARES!" c03 When it comes to the group itself, Shane is quite content with the successes so far, despite the hard competition with Digital Corruption. In the c04K-Rad & Eilte-Chartsc03 they ranked second in the c04"Best Overall Group Performance in All Areas"c03 for five issues. f4"We always got a good rank in several other charts, but that always really depends since no charts nowadays supports neither shareware cracks nor major tools, and I think especially major tools are more popular as major games!f1 Still it seems hard hard to specify goals for the group as a whole. f4 "In a demo group it is easy because you have your script and running projects so you can set the point on them, but in the cracking Scene you never really know when the stuff will come, so we live from the next day to the other without having any real goals, if we can grab something, we do, if not, bad luck. We`ll keep trying finding faster ways to get the warez, that's it"f1 c01 "WE HAD TO FIX THE WHOLE GAME!" c03 Finally, we managed to make c02Shanec03 describe two releases, which to him were essential to allow us a look behind the scenes of the illegal Scene. c02WENDETTA 2175:c04 "We got a hint with the address of the publisher of that game, so I contacted them and got the game lateron. It came on a CD and unfortunately I hadn`t a CD-ROM at this time so I had to send it by express down to c02SIDc04, he lives in the south part of switzerland while I live in north part. There was no protection at all, so he only prob was to spread those huge files (due it was a CD rip!)" c02EVILS DOOM:c04 "That was really a bitch to release it, the game was already announced an half a year ago but nobody knows really where to get them since no publisher seemed to care about it, therefore the producer of the game, namely c03Olympia Software, c04dedicated to sell the game themself, in Zagreb/Croatia! So, they spreaded a preview of the game via Aminet with the address from them etc, am sure a couple of groups tried to get! The funny part of it, was that we were for sure not the first who got it, but all other complained about corrupted disks etc so my hope was to get a full version of it, but after I`ve checked the disk, I noticed that I had the very same prob, it was always the same, disk nr. 2 - 8 were non-dos, only the first one was ok. So I started to scan this one and found out that those guys used the c03Diskspare Devicec04 and without mounting it, AmigaOS won`t accept it as a DOS-disk of course! Actually it was easy to find this bug, you just had to study the installer script, the prob was that this installer only mounted DF0: so when it asked for the second disk and you used a second floppy the disk was still non-dos. Apart that, the game simply wouldn`t work on any 040+ so we had to fix the whole game for it!"