UNDERGROUND
but not necessarily to other VMS computers. For example, a lot of NASA sites which ran a type of TCP/IP mailer that needed either a POSTMASTER or a MAILER account. John saw those names turn up inside the worm's progeny.
Even if it only managed to break into an unprivileged account, the worm would use the account as an incubator. The worm replicated and then attacked other computers in the network. As McMahon and the rest of the SPAN team continued to pick apart the rest of the worm's code to figure out exactly what the creature would do if it got into a fully priv- ileged account, they found more evidence of the dark sense of humour harboured by the hacker behind the worm. Part of the worm, a subroutine, was named 'find fucked'.
The SPAN team tried to give NASA managers calling in as much information as they could about the worm. It was the best way to help computer managers, isolated in their offices around the country, to regain a sense of control over the crisis.
Like all the SPAN team, McMahon tried to calm the callers down and walk them through a set of questions designed to determine the extent of the worm's control over their systems. First, he asked them what symptoms their systems were showing. In a crisis situation, when you're holding a hammer, every- thing looks like a nail. McMahon wanted to make sure that the problems on the system were in fact caused by the worm and not something else entirely.
If the only problem seemed to be mysterious comments flashing across the screen, McMahon concluded that the worm was probably harassing the staff on that computer from a neighbouring system which it had successfully invaded. The messages suggested that the recipients' accounts had not been hijacked by the worm. Yet.
VAX/VMS machines have a feature called Phone, which is useful for on-line communications. For example, a NASA scientist could 'ring up' one of his colleagues on a different computer and have a friendly chat on-line. The chat session is live, but it is conducted by typing on the computer screen,