Even as
the WANK worm coursed through NASA, it was launching an aggressive
attack on DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago. It
had broken into a number of computer systems there and the Fermilab
people were not happy. They called in CIAC, who contacted Oberman with
an early morning phone call on 16 October. They wanted him to analyse
the WANK worm. They wanted to know how dangerous it was. Most of all,
they wanted to know what to do about it.
The DOE people traced their first contact with the worm back to 14
October. Further, they hypothesised, the worm had actually been
launched the day before, on Friday the 13th. Such an inauspicious day
would, in Oberman's opinion, have been in keeping with the type of
humour exhibited by the creator or creators of the worm.
Oberman began his own analysis of the worm, oblivious to the fact that
3200 kilometres away, on the other side of the continent, his colleague
and acquaintance John McMahon was doing exactly the same thing.
Every time McMahon answered a phone call from an irate NASA system or
network manager, he tried to get a copy of the worm from the infected
machine.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73