UNDERGROUND

the Pacific. Then in July 1985 the French blew up the Green- peace anti-nuclear protest ship as it sat in Auckland harbour. The Rainbow Warrior was due to sail for Mururoa Atoll, the test site, when French secret agents bombed the ship, killing Greenpeace activist Fernando Pereira.

For weeks, France denied everything. When the truth came out – that President Mitterand himself had known about the bombing plan – the French were red-faced. Heads rolled. French Defence Minister Charles Hernu was forced to resign. Admiral Pierre Lacoste, director of France's intelligence and covert action bureau, was sacked. France apologised and paid $NZ13 million compensation in exchange for New Zealand handing back the two saboteurs, who had each been sentenced to ten years' prison in Auckland.

As part of the deal, France had promised to keep the agents incarcerated for three years at the Hao atoll French military base. Both agents walked free by May 1988 after serving less than two years. After her return to France, one of the agents, Captain Dominique Prieur, was promoted to the rank of commandant.

Finally, McMahon thought. Something that made sense. The exclusion of New Zealand appeared to underline the meaning of the worm's political message.

When the WANK worm invaded a computer system, it had instructions to copy itself and send that copy out to other machines. It would slip through the network and when it came upon a computer attached to the network, it would poke around looking for a way in. What it really wanted was to score a computer account with privileges, but it would settle for a basic-level, user-level account.

VMS systems have accounts with varying levels of privilege. A high-privilege account holder might, for example, be able to read the electronic mail of another computer user or delete files from that user's directory. He or she might also be allowed to create new computer accounts on the system, or reactivate disabled accounts. A privileged account holder might also be