Clinton Haines

Early Life

Clinton 'Clint' Haines was born on 10 April 1976 in Australia. He attended Ipswich Grammar School, where he developed an early interest in computing. In the early 1990s he wrote his first computer virus in assembly language using the A86 assembler, marking the beginning of his activity in the underground virus-writing scene. He operated under the handles Harry McBungus, TaLoN, and Terminator-Z.

Virus Writing Activity

Haines authored a number of computer viruses during the early 1990s, including NoFrills, Dudley, X-Fungus/PuKE, Daemaen, and 1984. His most widely noted creation, NoFrills, infected systems at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Despite being characterized by anti-virus company manager Len Grooves as "a very average virus" that "could have been written by any first-year computer student" and that contained "serious design faults and programming bugs," the ATO nonetheless chose to shut down all 15,000 of its computers until the virus was fully eradicated in order to prevent further spread.

His virus Dudley, described as a variant of the NoFrills code and containing the embedded text [Oi Dudley!][PuKE], infected computers belonging to Telecom Australia and brought down their systems within two hours of infection.

Later Life

At the time of his death, Haines was enrolled at the University of Queensland, where he was completing an undergraduate science degree in microbiology. He died on 10 April 1997 — his 21st birthday — from a heroin overdose in Saint Lucia, Brisbane.

Legacy

Following his death, the virus-writing group VLAD authored a tribute virus named 'Memorial' in his honor, credited as RIP Terminator-Z by VLAD. The virus displayed a message on the screens of infected users acknowledging Haines, reflecting the regard in which he was held within certain circles of the Australian underground computing community.