The Internet Worm Incident

On the cvening of 2 November 1988. someone "inrccLcd" lhe Internet with a worm progrnm. That progrnm exploited flaws in utility progrnms in systems based on BSD-derived versions of UNIX. The flaws allowed lhc program to break into those machines and copy itself. thus infccling those syslems. This program eventually spread to thousands of machines. and disrupted nonnal activities and Inlcrnet connectivity for many days. TIlis paper explains why this program was a wonn (as opposed to a virus). and provides a brief chronology of both the spread and eradication of the program. That is followed by discussion of some specific issues raised by the community's reaction and subsequent discussion of the event. Included are some interesting lessons learned from