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 NASAÂ’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 attackÂ’s source was never
discovered, some evidence suggests that it might have come from hacktivists in
Australia.
See Also:
Attack; Hacktivism and Hacktivist; Worm.
Schell, B.H., Dodge, J.L., with S.S. Moutsatsos. The
Hacking of America: WhoÂ’s Doing It, Why, and How. Westport, CT: Quorum
Books, 2002.