Comments on: It was twenty years ago today

By: Brons

Brons — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:37:18 +0000

No. Not that DECnet worm. That’s a decade later. The Christma worm is in the late 80s. I’m talking late 70s. Totally different worm. I don’t recall if it was 78 or 79. I believe it was 78 that the worm was loosed at DEC. As I said, it is not well documented. I could always ask Xxxxxxxx when he let the darned thing out.
Brons

By: Bob Blakley

Bob Blakley — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:40:16 +0000

No, no, no. IBM (as usual) beat DEC by more than a year. The CHRISTMA EXEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Tree_EXEC) propagated a full year before the DECnet worm.
But hey – let’s not lose the thread. Adam, your poetry is brilliant. Do I sense a second career? Maybe an off-Broadway show?

By: bron

bron — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:00:36 +0000

At he risk of breaking the Mill Rat code of silence, I will point out that the Morris worm was loosed about a decade after the first worm crippled a worldwide network. It has been the habit of DECkies to not identify the culprit to outsiders, so I will save our distinguished colleague the embarrassment of being named, but anyone who worked at DEC at the time will remember the Easynet, then spanning three continents, being dropped to its knees when an engineer too clever for his own good tried to map the net using a self reproducing script that copied itself to all adjacent nods without excepting the one it came from.
I’ve always found it interesting that the DECnet worm aka Xxxxxxxx’s Worm is mentioned almost noweher, and so far as I have been able to tell, Xxxxxxxx’s name or even initials ever tied to it. A secret known by thousands. (Please note that this is not the 1989 WANK worm. That one was post Morris.)
Brons