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It would seem that virtually every reverser has heard of +ORC and read his tutorials (written some years back, yet still very inspirational). If you haven't then you probably aren't ready to become a reverser yet and should try something less taxing. 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 :-).
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 the commercialistic trends. 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 environment. 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). 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+ != +ORC, of that we can be certain.
You may read the "public" tutorials below, as no-one has seen the missing lessons we can only wonder if they ever existed:-
Lesson 1 - An Approach (Team 17's Pool Demo).
Lesson 2 - Tools and tricks of the trade (Indianapolis 500).
Lesson 3.1 - Hands on, paper protections (1) (Universal Military Simulator, Lightspeed).
Lesson 3.2 - Hands on, paper protections (2) (F19 & Populous).
Lesson 4 (1) - Time protections, an introduction (Link Check v5.1).
Lesson 4 (2) - Time protections, a little M$ bashing (MS Project v4.1).
Lesson 5.1 - Disk & CD-Rom access (basics) - (Mario Andretti, Reach For The Sky).
Lesson 6.1 - Funny tricks (1) - (Larry in search of the king).
Lesson 8.1 & Lesson 8.2 - How to crack Windows, an approach (PGP, Wincat Pro, WinZip).
Lesson 9 (1) & Lesson 9 (2) - How to crack Windows, Hands on (PSP, Snap 32, WinFormant 4).
Lesson 9 (3) - Nagscreens galore, the "Dead listing" approach (Hex Workshop, PSP).
Lesson 9 (4) - How to crack Windows, Hands on (WebExpress).
Lesson A - Advanced Cracking - Internet (Firewalls).
Lesson C (1) (2) (3) - How to crack Windows, Barcodes, Web trends & the Instant Access scheme.
The files used in these texts are maintained by +GreyThorne, his site at http://greythorne.cjb.net will help you more.
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