Spoon (JavaScript)

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Spoon is a self-replicating client-side JavaScript that would take advantage of unescaped HTML stored in user content to denial of service the server or hijack the users authentication to acquire privileged information. Users would typically be completely unaware that this was happening, though they may notice a decrease in performance. A client browser running the JavaScript could deluge the server with self-replicating submissions, which could in turn infect other browsers. As long as the browser window remained open, submissions would continually be sent to the server. With only a small number of browsers, this could denial of service even highly scalable systems.

Most popular around the time of The Matrix, this exploit dissipated with the rise in popular content management systems that properly escaped HTML content.