First published: 31st March 2008
In an announcement on its website, the virus writing group 29A has declared itself "retired". The last active member of the group, "VirusBuster" admitted he was unable to contact "ValleZ". "VirusBuster" said he was the first member of the group, back in the days of BBSs, and was now its last.
Over the years, the group was responsible for creating and releasing many firsts, including the first mobile phone network worm, Cabir, the first 64 bit virus, the first Pocket PC virus, Duts and other innovative creations.
Although the group's creations were generally proof-of-concept, and not intentionally damaging, they led the way for other virus writers in causing chaos. Cabir is a case in point: first released in mid-2004, it actually asked the user permission to install itself. 29A later released the source code and, by November 2005 there were 27 variants, some of which had spread worldwide. F-Secure attributed its success to it's persistence in pestering the user: once an infected phone "locked-on" to a target in Bluetooth range, it would keep sending requests until the user accepted it, or moved out of range. As the phone could not be used while a request was unanswered, many users accepted it.
29A was a relic of a former era, the very name, 29A being hexadecimal for 666, the biblical number of the beast, is redolent of nerdy youth rebellion. Nowadays, malware writers don't have pretensions of being k00l cyber-villains, they've snatched and run, leaving no calling-card.
