10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
new site. Unlike a virus, a worm doesn't latch onto a data file or a program. It is autonomous.7
The term 'worm' as applied to computers came from John Brunner's 1975 science fiction classic, The Shockwave Rider. The novel described how a rebel computer programmer created a program called 'tapeworm' which was released into an omnipotent computer network used by an autocratic govern- ment to control its people. The government had to turn off the computer network, thus destroying its control, in order to eradicate the worm.
Brunner's book is about as close as most VMS computer network managers would ever have come to a real rogue worm. Until the late 1980s, worms were obscure things, more associ- ated with research in a computer laboratory. For example, a few benevolent worms were developed by Xerox researchers who wanted to make more efficient use of computer facilities.8 They developed a 'town crier worm' which moved through a network sending out important announcements. Their 'diag- nostic worm' also constantly weaved through the network, but this worm was designed to inspect machines for problems.
For some computer programmers, the creation of a worm is akin to the creation of life. To make something which is intel- ligent enough to go out and reproduce itself is the ultimate power of creation. Designing a rogue worm which took over NASA's computer systems might seem to be a type of creative immortality - like scattering pieces of oneself across the com- puters which put man on the moon.
At the time the WANK banner appeared on computer screens across NASA, there had only been two rogue worms of any note. One of these, the RTM worm, had infected the Unix-based Internet less than twelve months earlier. The other worm, known as Father Christmas, was the first VMS worm.
Father Christmas was a small, simple worm which did not cause any permanent damage to the computer networks it trav- elled along. Released just before Christmas in 1988, it tried to sneak into hundreds of VMS machines and wait for the