`It was a kind of archaic system, but on
the other hand we didn't have to depend on the network being up,'
McMahon said. `We needed to have some chain of communications which
was not the same as the network being attacked.'
A number of the NASA SPAN team members had developed contacts within
different parts of DEC through the company's users' society, DECUS.
These contacts were to prove very helpful. It was easy to get lost in
the bureaucracy of DEC, which employed more than 125000 people, posted
a billion-dollar profit and declared revenues in excess of $12 billion
in 1989.10 Such an enormous and prestigious company would not want
to face a crisis such as the WANK worm, particularly in such a
publicly visible organisation like NASA. Whether or not the worm's
successful expedition could be blamed on DEC's software was a moot
point. Such a crisis was, well, undesirable. It just didn't look good.
And it mightn't look so good either if DEC just jumped into the fray.
It might look like the company was in some way at fault.
Things were different, however, if someone already had a relationship
with a technical expert inside the company. It wasn't like NASA
manager cold-calling a DEC guy who sold a million dollars worth of
machines to someone else in the agency six months ago.
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