Vecna
Vecna
Sex Male
Birth Date
Birth Place Brazil
Years active 1988 - 2006
Languages Assembly (80x86 and 6908e), BASIC, C/C++, Pascal, Delphi
Affiliation(s) Stealth Group World Wide, 29A

Vecna is a virus writer from Brazil and former member of the groups 29A and Stealth Group World Wide. Over his career that spanned three decades, he produced some of the most innovative and interesting viruses in the VX scene. He first started working with 29A in their second issue and though he briefly left the group, he returned soon enough that every issue from #2 to #8

Biography

Vecna was born in Argentina, but his family moved to Brazil when he was three years old. He received his first computer in 1986, a Brazilian TSR-80 Color2 clone known as a CP-400. He had actually wanted a video game console, and found few programs available for the system, so he started learning to code his own programs. At some point, he came to know BASIC, C/C++, Pascal, Delphi, and Assembly for two different processors very well, along with a little Perl, Lisp, Forth, Fortran, and Cobol among others. Later in his career, he would code almost exclusively in Assembly.

Virus Writing

He started trying to write viruses in 1988 with an attempt at one that infects the K7 tape drives on the CP-400, but found this difficult if not impossible. In 1992, he succeded in writing and spreading a non-resident companion virus in Turbo Pascal, which by 1997 could still be found in the wild.

In university, Vecna did not study anything computer-related, instead opting for Speech Therapy. He was dismissed from at least one university for his virus activities.

Sometime around 1997, he joined the group Stealth Froup World Wide after showing his Outsider virus to LovinGOD, the president of the group. He later joined 29A and produced Android and Orgasmatron for their second issue. He was with 29A until January of 2007 a little over a year before it disbanded from inactivity, with a small interruption where he left for one issue.

With 29A, his talent had grown to the point where his viruses influenced the works of his colleagues, which they readily noted. Benny acknowledged the Inca virus's influence on Begemot and Bumblebee included some of Vecna's code in AOC (AKA Anvil of Crom) and Ayuda. His code is also found in Lord Julus’s Huffman Compression Engine.

Viruses

Name

Vecna is the name of a Dungeons and Dragons RPG character. Vecna himself did not actually care much for the name, but after Pandemonium was published in VLAD issue 7, it was the name by which he became known. He would have prefered to go by the name "Sangue Sujo", Portuguese for "Dirty Blood". He also had a few other handles in Portuguese.

Ethics

Vecna held a number of view that set him apart from others in the VX scene. He had no problem spreading his viruses to unwilling users. He also had no issues with malicious Payloads. Much of his reasoning had to do with his politics and seeing viruses as a way of fighting imperialism. He was a strong admirer of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and other people whose visions of social justice lead them to dispense with ethics.

Sources

Cicatrix, Interview with Vecna. 1997.08

29A, Main. 2007.01

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