weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (11/09/88)
You know, that worm was kind of boring. All it did was propagate.
Wouldn't this have been a great opportunity to update code uniformly
across the ARPANET? Imagine the effect, for example, were B news 2.11
and GNU Emacs 18.52 and X11R4 all part of the worm? It would have been
a complete cinch to write a nifty little AI program to identify exist-
ing configurations, and then painlessly update everything in the dead
of night and then boldly seek out new machines to bring sweetness, har-
mony and enlightenment to. Just so that no one panics the next day,
it would also add a little note to /etc/motd, sign the comment "Your
Friendly Neighborhood System Administrator Man!", and everyone would
suspect that it was the *other* person with root access who did all
the grunt work the night before.
To minimize disruptions and also suspicions and investigations, I have
one more capital suggestion. Wait until some major holiday comes along.
This Thanksgiving is too close for comfort: as there are right now all
these sysadmins WHO MIGHT STILL BE A TINY BIT VIGILANT ABOUT SECURITY
then. I'd say it's best to give this idea a rest until late December
--by then all these sysadmins will be thinking EVERYTHING IS ONCE MORE
A-OK and STRENGTH THROUGH IGNORANCE. Dumb but true.
ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the firm,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a worm.