armm

ARMM
 n.

   [acronym, `Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation'] A Usenet
   {cancelbot} created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was
   intended to automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites.
   Unfortunately, the robot's recognizer for anonymous postings triggered
   on its own automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by
   this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of
   Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March 30,
   1993 and proceeded to {spam} news.admin.policy with a recursive
   explosion of over 200 messages.

   ARMM's bug produced a recursive {cascade} of messages each of which
   mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers
   of its parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header
   took up several screens and each message ID and subject line got
   longer and longer and longer.

   Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological messages
   crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line charges
   for their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle as
   "instant Usenet history" (also establishing the term {despew}), and it
   has since been widely cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the
   combination of good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a
   network. The Usenet thread on the subject is archived here. Compare
   {Great Worm}; {sorcerer's apprentice mode}. See also {software laser},
   {network meltdown}.
    

Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation
ARMM

   <messaging> (ARMM) A {Usenet} robot created by Dick Depew of
   Munroe Falls, Ohio.  ARMM was intended to automatically cancel
   posts from anonymous-posting sites.  Unfortunately, the
   robot's recogniser for anonymous postings triggered on its own
   automatically-generated control messages!  Transformed by this
   stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of
   Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of
   1993-03-31 and proceeded to spam news:news.admin.policy
   with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages.

   Reactions varied from amusement to outrage.  The pathological
   messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people
   paying line charges for their {Usenet} feeds.  One poster
   described the ARMM debacle as "instant {Usenet} history" (also
   establishing the term {despew}), and it has since been widely
   cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of
   good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network.

   Compare {Great Worm}; {sorcerer's apprentice mode}.  See also
   {software laser}, {network meltdown}.

   (1996-01-08)