help a novelist sound credible?

From: David Heddle (heddle_at_fbyg.org)
Date: 05/03/05 

Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 12:35:04 -0400

Hello,

I am writing a novel, a sort of techno thriller. So I am a writer, not a
hacker, although I am fairly computer savvy.

If you want to verify that I am a writer, not a hacker, see the page for my
latest book at http://heddle.typepad.com/here_eyeball_this/ and match the
name and email to what is in this message.

What I am looking for is a credible way that someone could have hidden
something in Linux (or any OS) so that a process with a "magic" name could
run undetected.

As I understand it, processes are given an ID and are stored in a hashtable.
But processes also have names, which I guess is the name of the executable?
So could a magic name have been (hypothetically) place in the Linux code
that allowed a process to run but perhaps avoid being placed in the process
table?

Maybe that's dumb, probably it is, but I think it is enough to make my
point. I am looking for credible suggestions, even if they only "sound"
believable--i.e. you experts would know it wasn't possible, but even
seasoned application (though non-OS) programmers would say, hmm, that might
be possible, both of these points:

1) A way that a process could run completely hidden, even from root,
preferably based on a hidden magic name

2) How someone might have hidden that "feature" in the linux source
code, and it remained undetected. I thought about a hash of the magic name
represented in octal and hidden in a C macro somehow.?

Also, can a process spawn a clone of itself but with a different name? If
so, what system function would it call to do so?

Thanks in advance!

David Heddle

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