May 15, 2003

Great Worm

n.

The 1988 Internet worm perpetrated by RTM. This is a play on Tolkien (compare elvish, elder days). In the fantasy history of his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful enough to lay waste to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung) were known as the Great Worms. This usage expresses the connotation that the RTM crack was a sort of devastating watershed event in hacker history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the Internet than anything before or since.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:45 AM

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