[109613] in Cypherpunks
RE: Re: Melissa won't be at the Mozilla.org party
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Tue Mar 30 23:20:52 1999
In-Reply-To: <3701150E.9F5B68FE@acm.org>
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 20:09:41 -0700
To: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>
Reply-To: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>
At 11:16 AM -0700 3/30/99, Jim Gillogly wrote:
>Ken Brown wrote:
>> The Christmas Tree wasn't 25 years ago - it can't be much more than 10 or
>> 12 years. I saw it - I was a VM system programmer at the time which was my
>> job from about 1986 to 1992. Very roughly contemporary with the Great
>> Internet Worm. It "got out" in a couple of places, including I think some
>> German universities.
>
>Right. It was called CHRISTMA EXEC and happened in December 1987. As I
>recall, it was more devastating on the European side than the U.S. side.
>The Internet Worm was Nov 1988.
You guys are absolutely right. To make amends, I offer the following URL
which has a description of the virus and its effects:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/5.80.html
There is a juicy quote from a message sent by Ross Patterson
<A024012%RUTVM1.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Mon, 21 Dec 87 15:22:26 EST
>(5) Is the Internet similarly vulnerable ?
Not to this one. It plays on several things that the Internet
doesn't have:
1) A large number of IBM VM/CMS systems. The program would only
run in a CMS environment. There is no reason one couldn't write
something similar in any other language, though.
2) A suitable file transfer system. FTP doesn't apply. It must
provide a way for a user to receive an unsolicited file, in a
runnable form.
3) A good method of determining targets. The CMS NAMES and NETLOG
files provided an excellent source of information. I suppose in
a Unix environment, ".alias" and "/etc/aliases" would be ok, but
.alias is comparatively rare, while NAMES files are almost
universal in CMS.
[I am having an irony attack]
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