INTERNET WORM
\ˈɪntənˌɛt wˈɜːm], \ˈɪntənˌɛt wˈɜːm], \ˈɪ_n_t_ə_n_ˌɛ_t w_ˈɜː_m]\
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The November 1988 worm perpetrated byRobert T. Morris. The worm was a program which tookadvantage of bugs in the Sun Unix sendmail program,Vax programs, and other security loopholes to distributeitself to over 6000 computers on the Internet. The wormitself had a bug which made it create many copies of itself onmachines it infected, which quickly used up all availableprocessor time on those systems.Some call it "The Great Worm" in a play on Tolkien (compareelvish, elder days). In the fantasy history of his MiddleEarth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay wasteto entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) wereknown as "the Great Worms". This usage expresses theconnotation that the RTM hack was a sort of devastatingwatershed event in hackish history; certainly it did more tomake non-hackers nervous about the Internet than anythingbefore or since.
By Denis Howe
Word of the day
dust storm
- a windstorm that lifts up clouds of dust or sand a windstorm that lifts up clouds dust or sand; "it was the kind of duster not experienced in years"