Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier Read Online Free PDF

computer network used by an autocratic government 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 associated 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 ‘diagnostic 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 intelligent 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 computers 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 travelled along. Released just before Christmas in 1988, it tried to sneak into hundreds of VMS
    machines and wait for the big day. On Christmas morning, it woke up and set to work with great enthusiasm. Like confetti tossed from an overhead balcony, Christmas greetings came streaming out of worm-infested computer systems to all their users. No-one within its reach went without a Christmas card. Its job done, the worm evaporated. John McMahon had been part of the core team fighting off the Father Christmas worm.

    At about 4 p.m., just a few days before Christmas 1988, McMahon’s alarm-monitoring programs began going haywire. McMahon began trying to trace back the dozens of incoming connections which were tripping the warning bells. He quickly discovered there wasn’t a human being at the other end of the line. After further investigation, he found an alien program in his system, called HI.COM. As he read the pages of HI.COM
    code spilling from his line printer, his eyes went wide. He thought, This is a worm! He had never seen a worm before.

    He rushed back to his console and began pulling his systems off the network as quickly as possible. Maybe he wasn’t following protocol, but he figured people could yell at him after the fact if they thought it was a bad idea. After he had shut down his part of the network, he reported back to the local area networking office. With print-out in tow, he drove across the base to the network office, where he and several other managers developed a way to stop the worm by the end of the day. Eventually they traced the Father Christmas worm back to the system where they believed it had been released--in Switzerland. But they never discovered who created it.

    Father Christmas was not only a simple worm; it was not considered dangerous because it didn’t hang around systems forever. It was a worm with a use-by date.

    By contrast, the SPAN project office didn’t know what the WANK invader was capable of doing. They didn’t know who had written or launched it.
    But they had a copy of the program. Could McMahon have a look at it?

    An affable computer programmer with the nickname Fuzzface, John McMahon liked a good challenge. Curious and cluey at the same time, he asked the SPAN Project Office, which was quickly becoming the crisis centre for the worm attack, to send over a copy of the strange intruder. He began pouring over the