I’m getting ready to upgrade my computer, and while going through some old files I stumbled upon a copy of Fate Zero, the last version of the infamous Fate-X program, which was released by MaGuS and FunGii in the late 90′s. Fate-X was a tool which added extra functionality to AOL, some of which AOL was ok with, and some of which it wasn’t very fond of. After Da Chronic (known for AOHell), MaGuS was probably the most widely known AOL hacker. Even though Fate-X 2.5 and 3.0 had a much bigger impact, Fate Zero was the most extensive in regards to features.
To maintain its status at the top of the heap, Fate Zero had to protect its external data, and this meant encrypting it so that other developers couldn’t snatch it up for their own progs. The prog scene of that time, however, is now long dead. Seeing these files today, I got curious. MaGuS was only 16 when he wrote Fate Zero. When I was 16, I knew almost nothing about encryption. It wasn’t until I was in college that I got a good exposure to the field of cryptography. Even though MaGuS seemed like a pretty smart guy, at that point in time he probably also didn’t know much about encryption. This made me think that the files might be easy to crack. It seemed like a fun way to spend a few hours, so I decided to see if I could decode them.
Interestingly (or not interestingly, depending on how you feel about it), the biggest source of external data for Fate Zero was AOL ASCII Art (ASCII Art done in 10pt Arial). This was typically used for scrolling into chat rooms. Fate Zero had over 500 files dedicated to this. You can see an example piece of art and its corresponding file encoding, below.
.--··´¯¯¯¨˜`·-., .---··· ´¨¨¨ `·. .·´ ', ,' ', ¦ /| | / | ', ( \\:\ | /| /''\ .| | '·. \|\ \.,'.|::\|\/ |¸,.-·´¨¨`·/.·´ | | ` ·-\\|'/|¨`, `|˜¨|¨˜`·„¸ | |´¯`, | ,'/||', \:'| , |_\::':/ | |, ,' | ,'//| ',¯¯·', | | ¯ | ,'/ | | ` ·. --·´ | | | |´ | | _ ` ·.__ .·´ | |/_ | | | |¨¯ ¯¯///,··\ ,.--·| | ',¯¨¨˜˜``' |.·´| |--,··´¯//\ \ \ // Aeka _¸'·-By KioNe
File data for the above picture:
MDRæ”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f¡’ý)õ ý¦¡“rn~f”…f”…f”“sŽ¡ ý”î …f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…fÁ,“Sk…f”…f,f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…moæ”…rˆ”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…fˆ rP”…ì”…f”…f”…f£áf”…f”…”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…Ân~f”Œr”…fœ…f”…¢½®Áfð…f£áf”…f£Œm½”…f”“”…f”…f”áSk…f”…m¢…f½ðÁf½¢‘m🀽ðÁuð r¡ ú Åý¢ ú”áf”…f”…f”áSk…f”…f”Åf¡Á¢Ý›” ԑf”…fÁðýîÝ ý¦ø f”…fð…fðõÁ …f”áSk…f”…f”…f›”ÂÝ›‘f½®ŒÂ …f”…ÂÀП€ˆ®”f”…fð…f”ár”‘m”…fðrP”…f”…f Œuð…fˆ õ›‘f”…f”…f”…f”…f”…”…fÝ”f”…f”…Ân~f”…f”‘m”…”áfÁ” t”’s)…f”…f”…f”…fð…f”…”…f”…f”…Ân~f”…f”áú”áf”áf”ÄfÁ” tÀÓ…t)…f”…f”áf”…f𔥔…f”…fÝoæ”…f”…”…”… $…f$”u ý½”…f”‘tŽ¡ ”…f”áf›‘õ ýÞÁÔŒSk…f”…fð“ýð…fð’s, ú£”¢Ð…¢”…f£…fµÊ±Â”…¥› s£í…‘Ê㳫n~
So right away it’s clear he’s not using a simple substitution cipher, yet due to the repeated use of white space in the source data, a pattern does seem to emerge in the encoded data. I compared the file sizes and found MaGuS’ encoded *.mdr files to be 5 bytes larger than their decoded counter parts. I chalked this up to the “MDR” that prefixed all the files, and the ending carriage return and line feed that seemed to end all of the files.
That meant there was probably one-for-one character encoding going on. After trying a few things out, I realized every 4th character seemed to use the same encoding. My guess was that he was combining 4 simple substitution ciphers, and using a different cipher depending on the index of the character. I created a quick script that read in an input/output combination and then tried to use that information to decode an encrypted file. To my delight, the script (mostly) worked! This was great, however, without knowing the full map of each cipher, I would only be able to get partial results.
I looked further and found each cipher was simply doing a character offset, meaning each cipher was a Caesar Cipher. The offsets were 70, 97, 116 and 101, respectively. If you look up the corresponding ASCII code for those numbers, you get the word “Fate”. I tried out this new decoding strategy and was able to successfully decode a directory of MaGuS’ files. I had broken the code! MaGuS was using what is known as the Vigenere Cipher, and for that particular directory, “Fate” was the pass-phrase.
In another interesting twist, I noticed certain types of files used different Vigenere keywords. For his *.mdf data files, the keyword “12151981″ was used. My guess was that this was his birthday, since this date would have made him 16 when the prog was released and he mentions that he was 16 in the app’s about section. In this same about section he also mentions that he’s Asian and what high school he went to. This narrows down who he is to almost a T.
This got me thinking: “I wonder if I can track down who MaGuS was?” With the aid of some crafty googling, email addresses taken from webpages mentioned inside of Fate (if you dig through the machine code, you’ll find a dozen or so URLs), Rapportive (which can be used to look up social profiles based on email addresses), the internet archive, and leads taken from Fate Zero itself, I was able to pin point an individual who fit all of the criteria and was friends with people who got shout outs in Fate. I plugged their name and the “12-15-1981″ birthday into dobsearch.com, and only one result came back, and it was from the state and city MaGuS said he lived in. I was stunned, I had found MaGuS.
I feel like it’d be wrong to out him, but at the same time I know it’d be a cop-out to not say anything. So I’ll just say that according to his LinkedIn and Facebook, he works for a consulting firm in the Washington DC area and is specializing in web related work. The rumors of him working for a security firm or of being this guy are false. He also seems to be somewhat of world traveler, and has a side hobby of being a photographer.
Part of me wondered for a second if I should contact him. He was a big inspiration to me back in the day, and Fate-X and its ilk are what led me to learn how to program. However, after talking with my wife, we thought that’d be too creepy. He made some cool progs a long, long time ago, no need to freak him out with some elaborate story that involves breaking some encryption he wrote over a decade ago.
Anyway, after I’d finished my little side quest, and I realized I still had 500+ decrypted AOL ASCII Art files, many of which haven’t seen the light of day in over a decade. Since some of that stuff is kind of cool, I decided to create a gallery for it. If you have a few moments check it out. Also, feel feel to grab and host any art there that you like, just be sure to leave in any artist signatures. It’s kind of strange to think that era is so far away, but also kind of neat to find remnants of it every so often.
2013.04.28 Update: A bit more has happened since I made the original post. MaGuS actually emailed me to congratulate me on the finding and to confirm his identity (though I’ll continue to respect his anonymity). He also mentioned that at the time he wrote Fate he had no training or knowledge of programming, and that he came up with his own encryption method as he went along. I don’t fault him for this, as Fate is still really impressive and I think most of us were in the same boat back then. He seems like a pretty cool guy, and I was glad to hear he enjoyed the post.
Holy crap, sir. This post brought back a bunch of memories. I always wondered how those “verify MaGuS and FuNGii” bits of FateX worked! (Although, of course, this isn’t that…)
I spent a few minutes trying to crack the verifier too, but was unable to do so. Most of the strings inside of Fate are plain text, so you can see them if you open up the exe in a text editor. However, it looks like MaGuS knew this. I didn’t see obvious strings around the piece of machine code representing the verifier. So he may have done something like this:
key = Chr(#) + Chr(#) … (where # is the ASCII number of the letter)
However, the interesting thing about the verifier is the it requires two inputs – a screen name and a key. This is presumably so MaGuS can prove himself while logged in as any account (and so he doesn’t need a static account, in case he were to get TOSed). This means that the program probably verifies a screen name/key combination by preforming some kind of hash on the screen name to see if it matches the key. And actually, I didn’t even think of this until I started typing this comment, but the verifier probably preforms the same Vigenere Cipher type encryption that’s used elsewhere in the program to get the key from the screen name.
Now I’m going to have to go back and try this out… if a minimum string length wasn’t set in the code, this would be really easy to crack. You’d simply enter a 1 character screen name, and then try each single ascii input from 0 to 255 as the key. If you found a match, you could move on to a second character…
Well, I tried the 1 character theory, and it looks like MaGuS was smart enough to check for short user names (the user “a” had no 1 character key). For longer user names I also tried the three other Vigenere key phrases he used in the app (“Fate”, “12151981″, and “2581″), and none of those worked. I dug around in the machine code but nothing popped out. I think I’ll throw in the towel for this piece since there’s the possibility that the app will always return a negative, and without any clues, the Vigenere key phrases could be anything. Oh well :/.
I had great time reading the post and comments!
Hey patorijk,
Thank you so much for posting this and and decrypting the Fate Zero Ascii Art. This really braught back some awsome memories I used to hang out in the Server vVaReZ MP3 Audio rooms and with groups like BDBYZ and OLZ
Elad, cypha_one – Glad you all like the post
.
Gallery is cool, but it needs a “next” button…
G – Thank you for the suggestion! I went ahead added it in, so you should see it next time you reload the page.
I’m not versed with cryptography at all, so I can’t quite keep up with you on here. I’m jealous that you have the talent to track him down. Why? Because I totally want to give him a big THANK YOU. It’s pretty crazy just how much of an influence his dinky little AOL “proggies” had on my life. It exposed me to programming, which got my brain working a different way. Here I am, today, using my skills for cancer research.
MaGuS, or whatever his real name, is definitely one guy I’d love to meet some day.
I have a feeling he’ll find this thread eventually, as it comes up for various MaGuS/Fate X searches on google. Cool to hear that it inspired you too, I sometimes shutter to think where I’d be if I’d stayed in creative writing (which is where I was heading before discovering progs and the AOL community).
MaGuS & FuNGii were my heroes!! Trading “proggies” and getting on mass mail lists were part of my teenage years. I knew a lot of those macro artists too. Thanks for the trip down memory lane patorjk.
No prob, glad you enjoyed the article
.
A number of the old macro artists from AOL have gotten back together on a Facebook group to catch up and learn about each other (back then you were effectively just a 14-year old with an alias). Email me and I’ll point you to it.
low_rydin@hotmail.com
Did you figure out who Fungii was?
I unfortunately did not. There’s was not a lot of info on Fungii. I’d read everything from that he was MaGuS’s cousin to that he was dead. Nothing was verifiable though, and nothing gave any clues to who he was after I found MaGuS.
As a side note though, I did also find HaVoK [1]. There was a poster on the digitalgangster.com message boards claiming to be him back in 2008. The person gave a lot of information that was not available without a ton of research, and even correctly gave MaGuS’s real life first name – though they spelled it wrong. However, it was close enough that I figured that they’d just forgotten how to spell it in the years that had passed. In the years since AOL, he apparently got really into gaming. He also gave out his email out to anyone who wanted to contact him.
[1] http://www.digitalgangster.com/4um/archive/index.php/t-19940-p-2.html
haha, seeing “CATWATCH01″ for a tiny moment STILL elicited a bit of a shock. Damn, scarred for life.
this was always one of my favorite top three sites. thanks for remaining.
jeffrey aka SphinX and i’m so in love with magus and fungii because im like so much better than the two of themohz >=p.:….
i’m from from int, oh, aohell, vbhelp, vb, vb6 etc etc and i says high. i went into an aol private room ‘Form1′ one day and i laughed my ass off because nobody was in there. i was like how f+ n+ wierd is this?
hi patorjk im science
i changed my name… hit me up people if you wanna be kept informed about when im releasing my book. itll be online for free on youtube because i hacked me some free web hosting… yep just plain old ascii file…youll scroll it left or right with the video placing instead of yeah that vertical one. i know i know. enjoy the tip everybody! mr free boy right here.
ibhellboy@yahoo.com
np, and glad you like the site
wow I was on aol since aol 2.5 16 bit. I borrowed a friend’s aol account and the day after that told him thanks but I now have about 20 other accounts I can use. 10 years later I still had never paid for aol…those were the times…..anyway thank you Patorjk I absolutely loved reading this!!
Glad you enjoyed it
This article makes me happy. I too started a career in programming due to AOL punters, room busters, and other progs. Would love to re-live those days, too fun.
That’s good to hear, I think many of us did. Those fun, being a lamer days were a pretty wild adventure I don’t think any of us will forget. I don’t keep in touch with anybody from that time, so it’s just a memory only I know about now. I just watched “Stand by Me,” on YouTube, and my days on AOL are kinda like a nerd version of that, with fat chicks and eLiTe TaLK (notice how I still get the caps right).
Fun times.
HaVoK
When I was first discovering AOL progs, my friend Chris would come over and share the latest ones he’d found (on floppy disks, no less). After AOHell, HaVoK was the second one we tried out. I still remember the first time I opened it. I was in the basement of my parents house and it was mid-morning. The intro song was the first time I’d ever heard old school Metallica. I don’t know why I remember that, but it’s what I remember when I think of HaVoK.
heh, I was going through a Metallica phase back then, so that makes sense. I’m impressed it even worked–that OLE stuff didn’t work sometimes. A lot of my code was written in “I hope it works!” mode. I was pretty bad, but that’s where I started, and it was fun being an asshole.
ph0nikz, I hope you find more people. I saw HoSS in that thread in 2008 on that digitalganster link above. I’ve always liked SuPeR MaD CoW (or whatever the caps was) for it’s creativity, so it was nice hearing his version of those days (I didn’t know him). God knows what happened to the rest of us, although I’m guessing many became programmers.
HaVoK
Mannnn..those were the days. I think magus, fungii, redxking, havok were all inspirations. I remember thinking i was the coolest kid on the planet. you messed with me, i kicked ya off online. Its what got me into computers and programs. I was just so fascinated. I love googling old handles and then finding people who still reminisce.
I became a developer as well… Havok, Magus ect…*huge influence*. Thank you all.
Cool idea, remixing the old proggies to work with the new tech. I’m sure AOL would appreciate that =).
I’m enjoying some discussion on the origin of Script Kiddies, and as I was referencing Fate and the myriad of other available programs in those Halcyon days of AOL I happened to search for ‘Fate by MaGuS’ for potential reference. Finding this was Neato Elito.
Wow… memories. I joined a little bit later than those listed here (they were legends in my time), but AOL got me on the track to a career in programming as well.
Fun as hell.
Excellent article. First prog I ever used was Fate X 2.5 by Magus. +1 for not outing him but I’d definitely shoot him a message and thank him for my career. I work as a sys admin now and have experience in almost every aspect of computing thanks to that guy. Had it not been for Fate X 2.5 I might have gone outside instead of falling into my computer!
I got all nostalgic after reading this post and others and thus started googling away.
Here is Da Chronic, maker of AOHELL, the program that started it all!!!!!
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1106/1106.4692.pdf
http://pushstart.info/
X99 here…
Good read man, brings back memories… I recall creating a bunch of different artwork, macros and specifically launch screens for Fate Zero… and I always remember thinking what a big deal it was to email back and forth with MaGuS… and having him solicit work was even cooler. I felt like a part of something.
I got my start in that scene doing tags and macros and some early photoshop art. If I recall there were even a few ‘X99′ macro fonts that were created for Fate Zero… or was it some other macro shop…. I can’t remember. I still have a big archive of all the old macros and art I did, it’s funny to look back on and realize that it really jumpstarted what I do professionally.
If you remember Macrohouse at all, do a search for it on Facebook
Hey guys,
Awesome article, I remember these times vividly.
I made a little homage to the AOL days with a video on youtube where I open a few different progs- AOHELL, HAVOK, FATE X 2.5, CHRISTMAS 98, SPIZAM, SPAMSOCK, and a few others.
I have a question for anyone out there who may know the answer… In Fate X 2.5 there is a Verifier for a person by the name of MegaPlex. You can actually verify Magus or Megaplex on this form BUT Megaplex is no where in the credits and I have never heard of this person before. Could this be the mentor of Magus? I always wondered how such a young kid was able to do such amazing things with coding. He was on the encryption bug back with Fate X 2.5 and his anti-decompiler shield. There is also another text encryption tool in Fate X 2.5.
Link to my video:
Youtube: http://youtu.be/HpWG0Izdj_k
hahaha oh man, so embarrassing. My wife’s sitting behind me and I’m not sure if I want her to see this. Wow, great video, I can’t believe I wrote that stuff–haven’t seen it in ages. Great memories. Thanks for the video.
Well I was bored today so I decided to see if I could get as far as you did.
I found all of the URL’s in the application. All of them are dead/changed except for (1). It looks like Magus was leaving a trail to things he liked? Links to computer/electronics stores in VA, Asian pride/asian rap sites. On one of the sites MaGuS left a comment in 1997. I tried using information gathered but couldn’t find anything immediately and quickly threw in the towel.
I have a ‘feeling’ that I’ve deduced his name and have probably seen his face amongst the many people he shares a name with, but I won’t throw it out there since I’m not 100% that is really his name ALSO I think if he wanted to be known he would throw up a website and say here I am.
I just made an update to the post, and I agree that it wouldn’t be right to reveal his identity. If you got that far, you probably did see him somewhere along the line. Also, for looking up the old sites, I used archive.org, since most of them are dead / outdated.
yep, archive.org is what I used as well.
I just read the update and thats awesome that he reached out to you. Magus was a huge influence on me in my early days as well, particularly because his applications always seemed to be a cut above the rest.
In 1994 got my first computer @ age 9, by mid-1995 I was fully into the AOL “hacking” scene at age 10 and AOHELL & Fate X 2.5 are the earliest programs I can clearly remember using on a frequent basis, though I always liked Fate better
Soon after I started using these programs I “had” to learn how to make them and thus I unknowingly began my career in Information Technology. Funny how that worked out.
I followed a similar path. Before AOL progs, I was heading towards biology or journalism. Had it not been my AOL days, I most likely wouldn’t have ended up a programmer.
Hey Guys,
Made a little video on Fate Zero by MaGuS in case any of you wanted to see it in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Q9Ji3Iwm8
@Pat, I’m sure you don’t remember but we used to shoot the shit all the time on IM, your sn patorjk. Still have one of my code samples hosted here under handle casper! Awesome!
Watched the video, though it looks like it’s removed now? The handle casper is familiar. And as odd as this sounds, people still regularly download the VB6 files, it’s kind of neat. Though I guess this is one of the few places still hosting stuff related specifically to VB6.
I actually just realized the code example download link was mixed up with the example below mine. Looks like I was using the handle “linux” in conjunction with casper at the time, lol the originality.
crazy, found my old screen name and website….
olicasperilo@aol.com
http://casper2k.cjb.net
Files dated 12/4/1999
Video got removed for background music.
Here is a new link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKJNwBrk8bM
enjoy!
hey kids. what an afternoon of reminiscence. started off finding an old aol cracker on my HD. started searching the net for old stuff, my stuff, friends stuff, including fate. my oh my the memories. dont know if anyone remembers me or not (doesnt matter). i released quite a number of things back in the 90′s, predominantly 96-98. so many fun times and learned so much. here is my old “shouts” list…
8ball, aiw, akira, akuma, amp, ares, bacon, cirkit, cocoa, debo, dolan, eich, finch, flect, fo0, glare, glitch, goten, grifter, gza, ib, ieet, jim, kani, kip, lapd, layzie, less, madd, magus, mikey, mist, mistik, monk-e-god, monky, mza, new, niik, nsp, nyco, outlaw, plinx, poof, rj2, silkk, sodo, son, sour, spoon, ty, twd, utta, vert, viru, uw, ytc, zimzum
just wanted to say “word”. and @pat, done my share of “detective work” myself. magus was my hero. was always HIGHLY into computers as a young child (remember my first 8086) but he definately inspired me to advance. so shouts to my boy Y.H. Thanks for the memories. anyone who knows/remembers me feel free to hit me up.
-stank
aolstank@gmail.com
Wow! This really takes me back. It sounds like everyone here commenting was probably in the same group at one time or another. Does anyone remember firetools? It had prodigy “fire starter” music over a “rotext.vbx” intro. I think the author was JP or something. I always called these AOL hack programs proggies or progs. I learned visual basic making these programs back in 96-99. In 99 we were making them for AIM not AOL. I have not pursued career of programming but I wish I did. Almost 30 now and trying the learn a programming language gets harder and harder having not touched it since I was a teenager. Great reading all these memories. I was a proggie collector I must have had 50 or so.
I think MaGuS made a mail sever (a type of AOL program similar to a mass-mailer but instead of sending your entire inbox to a bunch of people they could select, through commands in a chatroom, which mails they wanted from you and it would automatically forward them – similar to XDCC on IRC) anyhow… it had intro music from “NightRider”. Anyone remember what that one was called?
Correction firetools was by RJ . I don’t know why but it sticks out in my mind.
Upon looking it up, I find that RJ is no longer with us: http://100781.org/blog/2010/01/18/rj2/
http://www.ohio.com/news/internet-entrepreneur-dies-in-akron-house-fire-1.162988
thats the correct link to the rj2 news article. sad ;(
Sad to see this.
Hasn’t Fate been decompiled? vb3 was kind of known for that. If not, that is pretty cool.