TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 (HACKER-LAD sits at his workstation as BASTICH rushes up holding a magazine with the word BLITZKRIEG in large letters on the cover.) BASTICH: Hey, HL... Did you hear about this new BLITZKRIEG SERVER? Maybe it's time for you to change your evil ways! HACKER-LAD: Bah--! Don't tell me YOU'RE falling for that hoax too, 'Stich!
PANEL 2 (HACKER-LAD grabs the magazine and waves his fists in the air indignantly.) BASTICH: Hoax? But it was on CNN.com, and had an article in "Signal" maga-- HACKER-LAD: Do you believe EVERYTHING you read in those rags? I mean, listen to this--
PANEL 3 (HACKER-LAD reads from the magazine.) HACKER-LAD: A server - created by a QUANTUM physicist of all things - that launches a Killer virus to destroy both software and HARDWARE on a machine it deems a threat?! Even a pre-school WANNABE hacker would be shooting his lunch milk through his nose over THAT one!
PANEL 4 (HACKER-LAD rolls up the magazine and continues to shake his fists.) HACKER-LAD: ...And what's with this vaunted "non-linear" attack algorithm-? It may as well be an "nth complexity infinite binary loop" for all that means! It's just some meaningless-but-impressive-sounding techno-babble they threw in to snow over the idiot masses who think "A Brief History of Time" was an episode of STAR TREK! Blitzkrieg server INDEED!
PANEL 5 (Suddenly, an explosive burst blows the top off of HACKER-LAD's workstation chassis.) SFX: PAF--!
PANEL 6 (BASTICH and HACKER-LAD look at the smoldering workstation.) HACKER-LAD: On second thought. BASTICH: Wow, and you weren't even running NT.
CREDITS Bastich (c) 1998 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
Here we have the final entry of the original Bastich web comic. I personally like how much it feels like the (to me) "classic" era of the first semester or so. Instead of a high-concept, multi-part epic, we just get a standalone gag riffing on the news of the day.
In this case, it was the laughable news of the new "Blitzkrieg Server," first reported in a Signal magazine article (entitled "Make-My-Day Server Throws Gauntlet to Network Hackers") and later hyped by CNN and a bunch of others.
Computer nerds could accept an advanced algorithm that analyzed network traffic to predict a coming cyber-attack, but not a system that could then launch a counter-attack to physically damage the remote machine's hardware. It was ridiculous on its face but the media ran with it for a few days.
Even ignoring the claim of physical damage, just check out this blurb from the Signal article:
IMHO this is clearly meaningless technobabble designed to attract investors and never actually deliver the product - which seems to be what ultimately happened.
Hacker-Lad also makes a reference to an earlier online security hoax when he talks about "nth complexity infinite binary loop". That's from the Goodtimes virus, which was an actual computer virus that claimed it could damage your CPU with such a loop. We laughed about it, but a few years later, Blitzkrieg server was raising investor funding on the same sort of bogus claim.
Meanwhile, we couldn't wrap up this web comic without one last jab at Windows NT.