The Virus Creation Laboratory, or VCL, as it is known, was one of the earliest attempts to provide a virus creation tool so that individuals with little to no programming expertise could mass-create computer viruses. VCL required a password for access, which was widely published alongside VCL. The password was "Chiba City", a likely reference to the William Gibson novel "Neuromancer." A hacker dubbed "Nowhere Man", of the NuKE hacker group, released it in July 1992.