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HISVIRR.CVP   921215
 
                   The Internet Worm - the Media
 
Media coverage of viral programs, and major infestations, has been
consistently, and depressingly, inaccurate.  An enduring mystery
remains from the Internet Worm -- how did the media do so well at
reporting it, a record which has never been equalled, either before
or since?
 
Highly accurate newspaper reports on the Worm were appearing even in
regional newspapers as early as November 5th.  Although some errors
appeared in some stories, the errors tended to be minor.  Although
some very erroneous reports appeared, the ones that got printed
tended to be the more correct.  How did the information get out so
quickly, and how was the media able to discriminate between the
stories so well?
 
(Even the erroneous stories that were carried contained exceptional
information.   A story from the New York Times on Sunday, Nov. 6th
stated that Morris was able to track the progress of the Worm
because "[e]ach second each virus broadcast its location to a
computer named Ernie at the University of California".  While this
was not correct, it *was* true that the Worm was designed to have
packets sent to ernie.berkeley.edu.  The code which was to have done
this was faulty, but, had certain programming been in place at
Berkeley, it would have been possible to get rough estimates of
progress.)
 
John Markoff has come to be widely recognized for the excellence of
his reportage in technical matters.  An examination of his article
of November 8th, 1988 is very instructive.  While the technical
details of his report could not possibly rival that of Spafford, or
Eichin and Rochlis, the general concepts are present, clear and well
presented.  While experts could quibble over some of the details (he
describes the sendmail debug option as a "trapdoor", and is rather
free with assignment of motivation) I suspect they would have to
admit that the important points are all there.
 
Still, what contributed to this unprecedented, and so far
unequalled, media accuracy?  One of the factors is undoubtedly the
number of researchers who were involved.  Across the country, dozens
and perhaps hundreds of people were involved in a detailed
examination of the worm.  Very little other work was being done
until the problem was resolved.  (Let's face it, for many people
little work *could* be done until it was resolved.)  Even those who
were not actually engaged in research as to what the bug did were
following the developments closely so as to be able to disinfect
systems that they were responsible for.  At the same time, there was
not as much time for misinformation to spread via "friends of
friends" who had once seen a copy ...
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1992   HISVIRR.CVP   921215

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Vancouver          ROBERTS@decus.ca         | "Power users think
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Research into      rslade@cue.bc.ca         |  Stoned' is part of
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