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worm


worm: [from `tapeworm' in John Brunner's novel "The
   Shockwave Rider", via XEROX PARC] n. A program that propagates
   itself over a network, reproducing itself as it goes.  Compare
   virus.  Nowadays the term has negative connotations, as it is
   assumed that only crackers write worms.  Perhaps the
   best-known example was Robert T. Morris's `Internet Worm' of 1988,
   a `benign' one that got out of control and hogged hundreds of
   Suns and VAXen across the U.S.  See also cracker, RTM,
   Trojan horse, ice, and Great Worm, the.