WANK Worm

One of the first hacktivist protests to use a computer worm occurred on October 16, 1989, at the U.S. Aeronautics and Space Administration in Greenbelt, Maryland. As aerospace scientists logged onto their computers, they were hit with a banner from the WANK worm reading “WORMS AGAINST NUCLEAR KILLERS; YOUR SYSTEM HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY WANKed.”

At the time of the crack attack, anti-nuclear protestors wanted to stop the Galileo space probe, which was fueled with radioactive plutonium and bound for Jupiter. A manager with NASA’s SPAN office said that he believed the worm cost NASA as much as half a million dollars in wasted time and resources. Though the attack’s source was never discovered, some evidence suggests that it might have come from hacktivists in Australia.

See Also: Attack; Hacktivism and Hacktivist; Worm.