Out of the 30 or so panels that Miles Foster had to attend, pro forma, only one held any real interest for him. It was a mathe- matical presentation entitled, "Propagation Tendencies in Self Replicating Software". It was the one subject title from the conference guide about which he knew nothing. He tried to figure out what the talk was going to be about, but the answer escaped him until he heard what Dr. Les Brown had to say. Miles Foster wrote an encapsulated report of Dr. Brown's presen- tation with the 23 other synopses he was required to generate for the NSA. Proof of Attendance. SUBJECT: Dr. Les Brown - Professor of Computer Science, Sheffield Univer- sity. Dr. Brown presented an updated version of his PhD thesis. CONTENTS: Dr. Brown spoke about unique characteristics of certain software that can be written to be self-replicating. He examined the properties of software code in terms of set theory and adequately demonstrated that software can be written with the sole purpose of disguising its true intents, and then replicate or clone itself throughout a computer system without the knowledge of the computer's operators. He further described classes of software that, if designed for specific purposes, would have undetectable characteristics. In the self replicating class, some would have crystalline behav- iors, others mutating behaviors, and others random behaviors. The set theory presentations closely paralleled biological trans- mission characteristics and similar problems with disease detec- tion and immunization. It became quite clear from the Dr. Brown's talk, that surrepti- tiously placed software with self-replicating properties could have deleterious effects on the target computing system. CONCLUSIONS It appears prudent to further examine this class of software and the ramifications of its use. Dr. Brown presented convincing evidence that such propagative effects can bypass existing pro- tective mechanisms in sensitive data processing environments. There is indeed reason to believe that software of this nature might have certain offensive military applications. Dr. Brown used the term 'Virus' to describe such classes of software. Signed, Miles Foster Senior Analyst Y-Group/SF6-143G-1 After he completed his observations of the conference as a whole, and the seminars in particular, Miles Foster decided to eliminate Dr. Brown's findings from the final submission to his superiors. He wasn't sure why he left it out, it just seemed like the right thing to do. **************************************************************** Chapter 1 August, 4 Years Ago. National Security Agency Fort George S. Meade, Maryland.