ADM Worm of 1998

A collection of programs written to automatically exploit vulnerabilities in Linux systems to gain access, attack other systems from compromised hosts, and copy itself to vulnerable systems. This worm was seen in the period May 1, 1998, to late May 1998. When this worm hit, compromised systems were left with a “w0rm” backdoor account. The target’s Internet Protocol (IP) Address was then emailed to the worm’s developers. All logfiles in the targeted directory were deleted, and all index.html files on the file system were located and replaced with the words “The ADM Internet w0rm is here!”

See Also: Electronic Mail or Email; Internet Protocol (IP); IP Address; Linux; Logfiles; Malware; Vulnerabilities in Computers; Worm.