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potentially the greatest single collection of technical minds on Earth, had such lax computer security that a computer-literate teenager could have cracked it wide open. The tall poppy was being cut down to size by a computer program resembling a bowl of spaghetti.

The first thing any computer system manager learns in Computer Security 101 is never to use the same password as the username. It was bad enough that naive users might fall into this trap . . . but a computer system manager with a fully privileged account.

Was the hacker behind the worm malevolent? Probably not. If its creator had wanted to, he could have programmed the WANK worm to obliterate NASA's files. It could have razed everything in sight.

In fact, the worm was less infectious than its author appeared to desire. The WANK worm had been instructed to perform several tasks which it didn't execute. Important parts of the worm simply didn't work. McMahon believed this failure to be accidental. For example, his analysis showed the worm was programmed to break into accounts by trying no password, if the account holder had left the password blank. When he disassembled the worm, however, he found that part of the program didn't work properly.

Nonetheless, the fragmented and partly dysfunctional WANK worm was causing a major crisis inside several US government agencies. The thing which really worried John was thinking about what a seasoned DCL programmer with years of VMS experience could do with such a worm. Someone like that could do a lot of malicious damage. And what if the WANK worm was just a dry run for something more serious down the track? It was scary to contemplate.

Even though the WANK worm did not seem to be intention- ally evil, the SPAN team faced some tough times. McMahon's analysis turned up yet more alarming aspects to the worm. If it managed to break into the SYSTEM account, a privileged account, it would block all electronic mail deliveries to the