UNDERGROUND

NASA stored a great deal of valuable information on its SPAN computers. None of it was supposed to be classified, but the data on those computers is extremely valuable. Millions of man-hours go into gathering and analysing it. So the crisis team which had formed in the NASA SPAN project office, was alarmed when reports of massive data destruction starting coming in. People were phoning to say that the worm was erasing files.

It was every computer manager's worst nightmare, and it looked as though the crisis team's darkest fears were about to be confirmed.

Yet the worm was behaving inconsistently. On some com- puters it would only send anonymous messages, some of them funny, some bizarre and a few quite rude or obscene. No sooner would a user login than a message would flash across his or her screen:

Remember, even if you win the rat race – you're still a rat.

Or perhaps they were graced with some bad humour:

Nothing is faster than the speed of light . . .
To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door
before the light comes on.

Other users were treated to anti-authoritarian observations of the paranoid:

The FBI is watching YOU.

or

Vote anarchist.

But the worm did not appear to be erasing files on these systems. Perhaps the seemingly random file-erasing trick was a portent of things to come – just a small taste of what might happen at a particular time, such as midnight. Perhaps an unusual keystroke by an unwitting computer user on those systems which seemed