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+ORC (Old Red Cracker)

_ORC's profile picture
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ORC how to crack lessons
 · 4 Aug 2019
8

Old Red Cracker (abbreviated +ORC) is the pseudonym for a hacker that wrote the very famous +ORC "how to crack" lessons.

Today his identity is still a mystery and many different hypotheses have been made. One rumour is that +ORC was a Professor, expert an Mathematic, cracking against commercialistic trends. Another theory suggests he was simply an exchange student who translated some cracking notes and then posted them on Usenet and around the web.

He used an526164@anon.penet.fi as a contact e-mail. The anon.penet.fi domain was an anonymous re-mailer service that shut-down in late 1996. It is unknown which e-mail address was connected to an526164@anon.penet.fi. Later +ORC used orc__@hotmail.com.

Why a plus in front of the ORC name ?

In lesson C.3 +ORC clearly answer this question:

(...) 3) It's even true for your own site denomination (try searching for "Bill's" page instead than for "WIKKY_WAKKY's" page... that's (reversing this approach) one of the reason I have a "+" inside my handle, this confuses the search engines just enough to give me a little more anonymity (search for me! You'll get quite a lot of Warcraft stuff :=). (...)

+ORC language

By analysing the text he wrote, we can assume +ORC was not American but most probably European.

In lesson C.1 we can read

(...) since I do not -fortunately- live in the States. (...)


In lesson 8.2 +ORC wrote

(...) American newspapers (at least the ones you can get here in Europe) are absolute shit... one wonders where the hell do the americans hyde the real information. On the "non-capitalistic" side of information there is a
spanish newspaper "El Pais" that seems to know about what's going on in South America, but it's so full of useless propaganda about irrelevant Spanish politics that it's not really worth reading. The monthly "Le Monde diplomatique" offers something too... this one exaggerates a little on the pauperistic "third world" side, but has a lot of useful information. See what you can do with all this information (or disinformation?) (...)

Despite he is very fluent in English, the used patterns are not those of a native speaker. For examples the word ordering in some sentences or the occasional germanic noun concatenations.

He misspell several words: ciffer instead of cipher, Hunderts instead of hundreds, Tuskany instead of Tuscany, Wodka instead of Vodka, Burocrat instead of Bureaucrat, Februar instead of February.

Some people claim that +ORC was probably dutch or german, but I notices he used also italian words. For example in lesson 1 we can read:

(..) HOW ' grossomodo ', you should proceed in your work (..)
(..) are fully functional - per se -, but have been (..)

Is +ORC from France ? In lesson 4.2 we can read:

AND NOW RUB YOUR HANDS: TO WORK!
And now rub your hands: to work! Fetch your copy of the time limited version of Winproj.exe (you'll find it on the web... many magazines in Europe have published it on their cover CD at the beginning of this year... The one I use here is taken from a second-hand French magazine I found in Basel some time ago: PCMAG n.108) Well how do we proceed?

In lesson 4.2 we can read:

I'm cracking here Microsoft MONEY 97, 90 days trial version I found on the cd-cover of a review called PC-PRO, issue 31, MAY 1997 (but I bought it in transit at Heathrow airport for three pounds at the beginning of April and not in May, as usual in this awful commerce oriented society even minutiae like the dates of the issues of magazines are completely false :=(

He seems not to be Swiss. In lesson 6.1 +ORC wrote

(...) As References I would advocate the works of Lai Xueejia, those swiss guys can crack *everything*. (...)

He uses the words those swiss guys , like if he is nor swiss.

Anyway +ORC is probably able to read german. From lesson 8.2 we learned:

(...) The newspaper of the real enemies, the economic powers that rule this slaves world, are paradoxically most of the time the only ones worth studying... somewhere even the real rulers have to pass each other some bits of real information. The "Neue Zuercher Zeitung", a newspaper of the Swiss industrials from Zuerich, is possibly the best "not_conformist trend analyzer" around that you can easily find (even on the web). These swissuckers do not give a shit for ideology, nor preconcerted petty ideas, the only thing they really want is to sell everywhere their ubiquitous watches and their chocolates... in order to do it, a land like Switzerland, with very high salaries and a good (and expensive) social system, must use something brilliant... they found it: a clear vision of the world... as a consequence this newspaper is very often "against" the trend of all the other medias in the world, the ones that are used only in order to tame the slaves... If the only language you know is english (poor guy) you could try your luck with the weekly "Economist"... you'll have to work a lot with it, (...)

Why is +ORC cracking games?

In lesson 1 +ORC explains why he is using games instead of commercial applications as learn material:

The recent widespread appearance of "Demo"-CDROM on magazine covers is a treasure for all crackers! A short time after their release you 'll get all the copies that remain unsold for next to free. The demos on CD-ROMs will permit you to gather quickly a lot of applications -old and new- that have somehow been crippled (at times with interesting schemes). Truly a wonderful world of cracking possibilities! Gee! For next to no money you can secure on one CDROM the whole of LOTUS applications (or Microsoft or Wordperfect, or you name them) on "trial for 30 days" or "try it 20 times" editions. You'll really enjoy to crack them, to use them for ever and ever and/or graciously donate them on the Web to the poor lamers that have no money and no brain.

GAMES are definitely not to be frowned upon! They are very interesting from a cracker prospective coz they are often "overprotected". With this I mean that they possess protection schemes of a relatively HIGH level hidden inside files that are relatively small. Now, see, it is much more easy, and simple, to track down and eliminate protection schemes inside a single 35.000 bytes long executable file than to locate them inside a collection of many lengthy DLLs and overlaids that could have swollen as long as 2.000.000 bytes each. The lazy bunch of "modern" programmers relies systematically for protection schemes on this "hide the sting in the wide desert" logic. As a matter of fact they are no longer able to program in assembler: they bank more and more on overbloated "fatty" atrocities like Visual Basic, Delphy or Visual C++. (Don't worry... I'll nevertheless teach you how to crack -and quickly- those huge applications too).

There is another reason for employing games instead of applications as study material: often EXACTLY THE SAME protection schemes that you find in a simple (and short) shareware game will be used -without much improving- a little later in order to "protect" some huge and extremely expensive graphic application.

For this reason in my tutorial we'll often crack games protection schemes, even if we'll later apply what we learn mainly in order to crack the protection schemes of commercial applications, or to crack the access protection routines to remote servers, or BBS, or even ATM (cash dispensers).

+ORC motivation

In the second lesson, +ORC explains why he decided to crack software protections:

Strange as it may seem, the reasons for cracking are very important for the success of our task. We (at least we old crackers) crack AGAINST society, and OPPOSING laws and conventions. We usually DO NOT crack for money or for other "commercial" reasons (just sometimes, and we are expensive: I have plenty of money already and my services are VERY expensive if you need an aimed deprotection). But in general we don't care much for money and -as you can see- I am giving away the basis of what I know for free with this tutorial. The programs we crack should be made free for everybody, even if we spent some of our time deprotecting them. We could not care less of the commercial value of a given program, not to mention the holy work of the ethical programmers... we program ourselves, but only because we LIKE it... if somebody does something only in order to gain money, he does not deserve anything. It's the mind challenge that counts, NEVER the profit! (Even if you can make good use of the cracked programs and even if -as I said- there is at times a personal profit).

This is an indispensable attitude! Only a non-mercantile mind can leap forward to the "satori" knowledge that you desperately need if you want to crack quickly and elegantly huge iperbloated monstruosities that somebody else wrote and protected, or if you want to gain access to some hidden information, data that you would like to snoop but that somebody declared "off limits", coz a stupid government, or useless industry sector, or money oriented programmer or dirty lobby of interest decided it.

If you do accept the society where we are compelled to live, its awfully egoistic way of life and its dirty "profit" values, you may eventually learn how to disable some simple protections, but you'll never be able to crack in the "right" way. You must learn to despise money, governments, televisions, trends, opinion-makers, public opinion, newspapers and all this preposterous, asinine shit if you want to grasp the noble art, coz in order to be emphatic with the code you must be free from all trivial and petty conventions, strange as it may sound. So you better take a good look around you... you'll find plenty of reasons to hate society and act against it, plenty of sparks to crackle programs in the right way... Hope all this did not sound too cretin.

Was +ORC a male or a female ?

We know +ORC was a male. In lesson 9.2 he wrote:

(...) of long tables, me, my wife and my kids exchanging views and opinions with other people (...)

+ORC Martini-Wodka recipe

In every lesson, +ORC mentioned the Martini-Wodka cocktail. In lesson 3.2 we can find the recipe:

Martini-Wodka (Two blocks of ice first, 1/3 dry Martini from Martini & Rossi, 1/3 Moskovskaia Wodka, 1/3 Schweppes indian tonic)

What is the age of +ORC ?

Nobody knows exactly the age of +ORC, but some evidences in the text lessons suggest was relatively "old" when he wrote the lessons.

In lesson 3.1 +OSC wrote:

This very old EGA program is one of the first I cracked in my youth, and it's very interesting coz it employs a very basilar protection scheme (a "PRIMITIVE"! More than 80% of the protection schemes used to day (January 1996) are directly derived from one of the 12 primitives.

In lesson 9.2 we can read:

It's amazing HOW MUCH you can get from internet, and this could make the Web potentially dangerous from a "human-social" point of view... how will we keep social and human contacts if we roam around so much without ever touching each other? A good idea in order to re-establish somehow our "humanity" "contact" balance is to seek physical contact not only with your loved one (which is always very good) but also with many other human beings: I have for instance three massage sessions every week with my masseuse, which is half my age but strong enough to cure my rheumatisms... just to make another example, I enjoy very much all restaurants which have the so called "tables d'hote" i.e. where everybody sits together at a couple of long tables, me, my wife and my kids exchanging views and opinions with other people, people you never saw before and will probably never see again, drinking excellent wines, instead of sitting grimly on the petty, bourgeois, "4 chairs" little tables for stupid greedy families that abound inside "normal" restaurants... (I'll not ever mention the "fast food" abominations: I am definitely in favour of "slow food" and believe McDonald should be hanged for what he has done -in the whole world- to 4000 years of gorgeous gastronomical traditions... what's the point of eating quickly (and badly), unless you are a slave of your time?)... enough: You could crack Win32 applications even using Winice for Windows 3.1 though

Lessons were written around 1996/1997. The "old EGA program" +ORC refers to in lesson 3.1 is "Universal Military Simulator" released by Dr Ezra SIDRAN in 1987. In lesson 9.2 we learned he is married and have childs.

+ORC "how to crack" lessons

Here is the list of all +ORC lesson. Some of them may have been lost forever :(

Lesson 1 An approach to cracking
Lesson 2 Tools and tricks of the trade
Lesson 3.1 Hands on, paper protections (basic)
Lesson 3.2 Hands on, paper protections (advanced)
Lesson 4.1 Time protections in Windows (1) - an introduction
Lesson 4.2 Time protections in Windows (2) - a little Micro$oft bashing
Lesson 4.3 Time protections in Windows, advanced cracking
Lesson 4.4 Quiver protections in Windows
Lesson 5.1 Disks & CD-ROM access (basic)
Lesson 5.2 Disks & CD-ROM access (advanced)
Lesson 6.1 Funny tricks (1)
Lesson 6.2 Funny tricks (2)
Lesson 7 Intuition and luck
Lesson 8.1 How to Crack Windows (1) an approach
Lesson 8.2 How to Crack Windows (2) a deeper approach
Lesson 8.3 How to Crack Windows (3) a first conclusion
Lesson 9.1 How to Crack Windows (1) Hands on
Lesson 9.2 How to Crack Windows (2) Hands on
Lesson 9.3 How to Crack Windows (3) Hands on - Nagscreens Galore
Lesson 9.4 How to Crack Windows (4) Hands on
Lesson A.1 Advanced cracking (1) Internet Cracking (Unix)
Lesson A.2 Advanced cracking (Internet-DOS)
Lesson B.1 Zen cracking (basic)
Lesson B.2 Zen cracking (exercises)
Lesson C.1 Cracking as an art (1)
Lesson C.2 Cracking as an art (2)
Lesson C.3 Cracking as an art (3)
Appendix 1 How to crack all Microsoft programs on the planet
Appendix 2 How to modify Softice & Winice for our purposes
Appendix 3 A good wincracking tool: +ORC's visualcoder, with source code

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Comments

8
DrWatson's profile picture
@DrWatson

+ORC created the famous riddle:

"Gold, with six bars, or with the visor raised (in full face) for royalty"
"Silver, with five bars, (in full face) for a duke or marquis"
"Silver, with four bars, with visor raised (in profile) for an earl, viscount or baron"
"Steel, without bars, and with visor open (in full face) for a knight or a baronet"
"Steel, with visor closed (in profile) for a squire or a gentleman"


Here is the link:
http://131.92.15.128/+ORC

4 Aug 2019
Dreamcast's profile picture
@Dreamcast

This famous enigma was cracked. The solution is available at www.home.aone.net.au/~byzantium/found/found4.html

6 Aug 2019
guest's profile picture
@guest

great tutorials

15 Oct 2019
guest's profile picture
@guest

In lesson 8.2, where +ORC refers Windows 95, he says: "...but I must warn you... I thought exactly the same things about DOS in 1981 "

2 Nov 2019
guest's profile picture
@guest

[zZ] "The coward, the legend, the myth, the philosopher, the professor, the student". "It depends on your viewpoint I suppose".

Introduction

Virtually every single reverser will have heard of the +ORC tutorials.
Although they were written some years back, they still stubbornly infest the web. If you haven't read them yet and understood then you probably aren't ready to become a reverser yet and should try something less taxing before returning. There are many rumours circulating about +ORC even to this day, as well as sites dedicated to stalking him (even some claiming to have found him), yet no attempts thus far have been plausibly successful and the trail is now very cold and well-trodden :-), in other words, you are pretty much wasting your time even trying.


One rumour is that +ORC was nothing more than a student who translated some cracking notes and then posted them around the web (taking the credit when they became famous), another is that he was some sort of lone professor cracking against commercialistic trends, I remember somewhere even a proposition he was US military. Certainly most accept that the author is of East-European origin, the English texts available on the web are certainly not the original writings of a professor, there are too many poor grammar and spelling errors for this to be the case and the language is "net-cultured".


Analysis I've done on the texts also leads me to believe that +ORC has not visited recently some of the places he remarks on, the "red buses" in London is a very typical stereotype (there are many others). +ORC has obviously gone to great lengths to try and conceal his age at the time of writing these tutorials by littering contradictions throughout the texts, this leads me to believe he is younger than he is trying to suggest (a simple matter of credibility).


"I have for instance three massage sessions every week with my masseuse, which is half my age but strong enough to cure my rheumatisms..." "This very old EGA program is one of the first I cracked in my youth, ..." (1987)


He is obviously someone fairly familiar with UNIX systems and the university establishment. The anon.penet.fi anonymous re-mailer service only existed from 1993-1995, when other notable crackers of that era (Swedish student ed1son) also used its services (more pointers to the theory +ORC was really a student). The service was sensationally shut down when its pioneer (a Finnish student) ran into a dispute with the Catholic church, one of the service users had mass-mailed sensitive details regarding the Catholic churches attitudes towards certain groups of people, the pioneer of the service refused to name the culprit and was forced to shut-up shop (the church later confirmed the leaks were genuine).


+ORC now uses orc__@hotmail.com, yet he only replies to +crackers (in other words don't e-mail him), to be honest with you I'm not even sure he answers this one any more, it has been nearly 3 years since anyone last claimed to have heard from him, one suspects he might now have a lucrative security job and has wisely decided to leave his past behind him (a contradiction if ever there was one ;-) ). The choice to use MS Hotmail is perhaps an intriguing one if you bear in mind +ORC's supposed concern for security of communication / information, were I a conspiracy theorist I could easily believe that this isn't the same person as the texts author. On a final note, it is 100% accepted that Fravia+ is NOT +ORC. although he seems to enjoy perpetuating the myth that he just might be (those crazy Italians eh ;P), of that single fact we can be fairly certain.


You can download all of the public +ORC tutorials from +Greythorne, his long standing web page and FTP at http://greythorne.cjb.net will assist you more. If anyone out there has any of the missing lessons please feel free to e-mail them to me anonymously, I will be happy to refrain from publishing them. +ORC's Martini-Wodka


Perhaps the most famous cocktail in the reverse engineering business, here the precise instructions how you might prepare for yourselves a 'real' drink before a long reversing session (Warning :- the Martini-Wodka is an acquired taste and I personally don't recommend the Olive).


Take a cylindrical "milk" glass.
- 2 ice cubes.
- 1/3rd dry Martini.
- 1/3rd Wodka Moskowskaia (don't use Smirnoff as a substitute).
- 1/3rd Schweppes Indian Tonic.
- Lemon zest and Green Olive.
+ORC Stalking Matters


I've reworked most of this information from posts at message boards. Before disappearing +ORC set up a gate which was locked by a riddle, no-one except the very capable +Hackmore Readwrite has ever claimed to have solved it. Follow the links below and judge for yourself.
The Riddle


"Gold, with six bars, or with the visor raised (in full face) for royalty"
"Silver, with five bars, (in full face) for a duke or marquis"
"Silver, with four bars, with visor raised (in profile) for an earl, viscount or baron"
"Steel, without bars, and with visor open (in full face) for a knight or a baronet"
"Steel, with visor closed (in profile) for a squire or a gentleman"


http://www.home.aone.net.au/byzantium/found/found.html - The cracking of the riddle (courtesy of the Basilisk).


Allegedly +ORC destroyed his gates soon after they were discovered, they led +Hackmore to a GeoCities page written by someone calling himself LoLander (it crudely hosts some +ORC material, pretty basic looking). You can get a copy of this website in a zip file at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Horizon/6682/Index1.htm - does it look like a real +ORC site, well I don't know :-).


+Hackmore Readwrite also claimed he was able to find the real +ORC, right down to the nitty gritty personal details of his name, address & phone number. At about the time all of this was revealed +ORC himself vanished without trace. More recently (in a private e-mail) +Hackmore has gone so far as to say the keys to +ORC's identity are verifiably inside the LoLander files (and that they still open the door to +ORC's real identity).


There was another published attempt at finding +ORC's gates, first documented as an essay on Fravia's site, the stalker (a troller) suggests that the great +ORC was a Swedish exchange student (as ed1son also used anon.penet.fi this seems a possibility, maybe they were friends at some point?, +Hackmore Readwrite has since discounted this as a theory). You can find this alleged gate at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Stadium/9490 (Nosferatu). I'm not so convinced of this one but discerning readers can make up their own minds.

My thanks go to +Hackmore Readwrite and several others for the information contained here. Is Fravia+ == +ORC?


I received this e-mail fairly recently (20th December 2000 in fact) from an interested party speculating that Fravia+ & +ORC are in fact the one and same individual. Dare I say (as far as one can really know), that I'm pretty confident this is NOT the case, the speculation was always going to be there though as an occupational hazard of fravia.org, the following 'ideas' and reply are interesting nevertheless :-).


Original Message (edited somewhat by yours truly)


"I am not very good with introductions and politeness formulas, so I am going to skip right to the subject. Since I wrote you another e-mail, somehow cryptic, and you never answered it, I decided to write again, so here it is :- It is pretty much possible that Fravia is ORC (if Fjalar Ravia really exists)".


"The coincidences are :-
1). +ORC's address : an526164@anon.penet.fi
- your birth date : 1952 anno domini (==1952 ad =='52 6164).
- you were born in Finland (...penet.fi).
- the 'an' part appears in some tutorials, in others does not, in others appears 'na' so there is some confusion .But 'an' is the title of one web page belonging to you (The first letters of your wife's and mother's name), could be nothing here."


"2). The old red cracker :-


- you are not young.
- you are a "Red" through the history of your country and of your family, red is russian, so that put me into some trouble.
- you were also called "Red Avenger" ; See Fravia's site for this."


"3). All those german related expressions in your tutorials + quotes, you studied in Berlin."


"4). All that stuff at the Byzantium site are linking somehow fravia+ with +ORC."


"5). Many other things like :-


- quotes from your tutorials that match your short 'sited' biography :-


a). ''A passing knowledge of ancient RHETORIC can help quite a lot. Rhetoric is the "SoftICE" debugger you need..."(from tutors). He later studied history of the early middle ages and rhetoric, in Berlin..."(from site).


b). The example with those propaganda newspapers from one of ORC's tuts, begins with a swiss newspaper. We know that the national languages in Finland are finnish and swedish.


c). The examples about the cars F. Ravia hates so much (like ORC) and the one about the classical music F. Ravia loves so much (like ORC) are so obvious that I am not even going to cut-paste the quotes."


"My unknowns, my other knowns and my questions :-


- I could not find any of your parents on the web ("Sekasaintuja" - Disharmonies was written by a woman in 1904).
- I could not find your university essay.
- There are also some instructions at http://www.home.aone.net.au/byzantium/ made by the webmaster to associate hex numbers with letters, but nowhere in his site he associates 526164 with 52aNNOdOMINI, your birth date. There also are some other things about that webmaster (he is your age, likes looking at the stars...) that made me give you another secret identity in his person - I could be wrong here.
- You (Fjalar Ravia) left way too many clues on the page (io13.htm) about youself. Why?..
- Do you like cartoons, or watch them with your children?
- "This very old EGA program is one of the first I cracked in my youth..." - a quote from one of ORC's tuts in which he talks about a software simulator from 1987. At this time you (F. Ravia) were 35 years old...that can be considered youthness by some older people, but almost never by anyone that you cracked your first programs at about 35 (you took your university diploma in reverse engineering in your 20s).
- Why there are lessons missing? (I am asking for an answer besides that with "IF AND ONLY IF" part, please). How could ORC be sure that nobody will publish them, where is the part with free knowledge for ALL?.. Do these "other" lessons even exist?."


The Reply (slightly edited)


"Some good intuitions and some completely false thoughts in what you write...to cite but two false thoughts : there's no way you could have had an anon.penet number on request in those days and I'm not finnish...but you have a sharp mind nevertheless.

Many others riddles await you, some obvious, some hard to find. More riddles than solutions, eh? that's how things are in life, that's why we reverse my clever friend

work well, and "cauta" ; "cauta" == "search" in english


fravia+"


Just who is kidding who?, answers on an e-mail :-).


.....and just in case you fancied another theory.....


Hi,
I think +ORC is romanian, the reasons follows:
1). From Orc.htm : "work well, and "cauta" ; "cauta" == "search" in english"
- "cauta" = search in romanian
- "Cauta si vei gasi!" = "Search and you will find!" it is a very common reply in Romanian dialog.

2). From found2.htm, Part 3 : "To Hackmore


(...............)


on the other hand...
accidit in puncto quod non speratur in anno


work well
+ORC"


(The Latin means, roughly, it happens in an instant what was not expected in a year. Or, in other words, "Sometimes things happen quicker than you think").


- Not quite, we have in Romania a proverb also very common that matches better :


"Nu aduce anul ce aduce ceasul!" = "A year didn't bring that bring an hour!"


3). This argument could seems silly, but is true:
- Some dutch charity organisations & foundations justify their sympathy for Romanian people because we say that :


"Ne tragem din daci!" = "We came from daci people" or "Our ancestors was daci from Dacia".


Before the Romans conquered, the romanian territory was called the Dacia, inhabited by the daci people. But, "daci" it sounds EXACTLY like "dutch". Even if it is not historically true, psychology has a great effect. Tell this to a dutchman.


4). Could be an anagram :


+ORC=CautaRO+, meaning Search on romanian sites (*.RO).


Hope I bring a little light, at least a new hypothesis. Please ask me national peculiarities if you want to search this angle. And, of course, if you find his hidden page in a .ro site, let me know.


Florin V.
Romania


....any other theories I'll happily publish, but lets keep the whole +ORC thing in perspective ;-).
Final News on +ORC


My thanks go to disavowed for this.


"CodeBreakers:
When browsing your old pages, it is clear that you seem to have had a special "connection" to +ORC. +ORC seems to be like a ghost. Does +ORC really exists or is it just a myth/fake like the JRR Tolkien photo created by you?


+Fravia:
+ORC is dead. Died in Egypt. RIP.


CodeBreakers:
There is still the myth that there are some "missing +ORC lessons" existing.
Do they really exist?


+Fravia:
Dunno. I have seen only one in all these years. Those that got them were bound not to publish them on the web, guess they are no more important now, anyway"


Another set of typical +Fravia answers (engaging in conspiracy theories, maybe?), or perhaps like me, he is of the opinion that the +ORC 'saga' has rumbled on now for far too long and should be honorably retired ;-).

3 Feb 2021
guest's profile picture
@guest

+ORC valued freeing knowledge, world-wide cooperation, and anti-capitalism. He believed in the power of people to work together and break out of the imposed 'rat races' of their regional governments and corporations.

The following is an excerpt of one of +ORC's emails in the second year of +HCU in 1997.

I'll tell you a (minor) secret: when I started publishing my tutorial on Usenet, back in 1995, I did not know exactly where I would have landed. My idea, to put it simply, was to take advantage of the might of Internet in terms of anonymity, international dimension, easy access and "just in time" modifiability, in order to spread a very simple message using (as major vector) software cracking... this I deemed necessary coz verba movent, exempla trahunt.

My message was threefold:
- knowledge should from now on be free, we should not allow any barrier whatsoever any more;
- everybody should not only be allowed, but also helped to develop his capacities;
- the consum oriented society wherein we are compelled to live is NOT free, nor correct, nor the best possible one, far from it. We must help others, blinded by a well-concerted propaganda, to realise this.

If you examine these three sentences, you'll see that they support each other and that these same principle have been, many centuries ago, at the basis of the foundation of the "real" universities all over Europe.

6 Nov 2022
sabrina's profile picture
@sabrina

How many memories :P I remember reading +ORC's lessons on my old PC in the 90s. Downloaded them all from Devil BBS. Does anyone remember +Fravia, +ORC (Old Red Cracker) and +HRU (High Cracking University)?

11 Mar 2024
eZine's profile picture
eZine lover (@eZine)

I remember it!

13 Mar 2024
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