Christmas Tree EXEC
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The first widely disruptive replicating network program was the "Christmas Tree EXEC" which paralysed the worldwide IBM VNET electronic mail network in December 1987.
Written by a student at the University of Clausthal-Zellerfield in the REXX scripting language, it drew a crude Christmas tree - then sent itself to all every entry in the target's email contacts file. In this way it spread onto the European Academic Research Network (EARNet) then BITNET, and onto IBM's world-wide VNet.
On all these systems it caused massive disruption.
Although it has often been referred to as a "worm" or "virus", technically it was neither. It was not a worm because it needed the user to launch it, and not a virus because it did not attach itself to an existing file. It is best described as a "trojan" with a replicating property.
[edit] Trivia
The name is sometimes written "CHRISTMA EXEC" because the script file is an "EXEC" (executable), and the file concerned was in fact named CHRISTMA, as IBM systems of the day only supported 8 character filenames. The user was prompted to: "...just type CHRISTMAS..." - and this in fact launched the "worm".
[edit] References
- http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/5.80.html#subj1.1 Description at the time]]
- list of various "exotic" viruses and worms
- The full source code
