“I tried to contact ValleZ for some time in order to take a decision together about the future of 29A with no luck therefore I decided to take the decision alone. And my decision is that 29A goes officially retired. I feel this is fair because I am kinda the alpha and the omega of the group. 29A was born in Dark Node, my BBS, and I am the last active member of the group. My last words as 29A member are for all the people that worked hard to make of this group the best one: Thank you very much! Regards, VirusBuster/29A
29A has left the building!”
The 29A group (the name was taken from the hexadecimal for the number 666) is responsible for several famous viruses:
– Cabir – targeted at Symbian mobile phones
– Duts – the first ever Pocket PC virus
– Haiku – it generated Japanese-style poetry
– Stream – the first virus to take advantage of NTFS Alternate Data Streams
– Lindose – successful at infecting both Windows and Linux OSs
– Donut – a .NET aware Windows file infector).
Truth be told, the announcement doesn’t come as a surprise. The group has been in hibernation for some time and the authorities investigating the group’s activities have everything to do with it.