great worm

Great Worm
 n.

   The 1988 Internet {worm} perpetrated by {RTM}. This is a play on
   Tolkien (compare {elvish}, {elder days}). In the fantasy history of
   his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay
   waste to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known
   as "the Great Worms". This usage expresses the connotation that the
   RTM crack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hacker history;
   certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the Internet
   than anything before or since.
    

Internet Worm
Great Worm

   <networking, security> The November 1988 {worm} perpetrated by
   {Robert T. Morris}.  The worm was a program which took
   advantage of bugs in the {Sun} {Unix} {sendmail} program,
   {Vax} programs, and other security loopholes to distribute
   itself to over 6000 computers on the {Internet}.  The worm
   itself had a bug which made it create many copies of itself on
   machines it infected, which quickly used up all available
   processor time on those systems.

   Some call it "The Great Worm" in a play on Tolkien (compare
   {elvish}, {elder days}).  In the fantasy history of his Middle
   Earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste
   to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were
   known as "the Great Worms".  This usage expresses the
   connotation that the RTM hack was a sort of devastating
   watershed event in hackish history; certainly it did more to
   make non-hackers nervous about the Internet than anything
   before or since.

   (1995-01-12)