re: CHRISTMA effects (CVP)

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1 total messages Started by David M. Chess Tue, 17 Nov 1992 17:29

#4260

Author: David M. Chess
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 17:29

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> From:    rslade@sfu.ca

>IBM's internal network,
>VNET, was more heavily hit than either EARN or Bitnet, and drastic
>action, in the form of a general system shutdown, was felt to be
>needed to clear up the mess.

This is an urban legend, I'm pretty sure (if you have a good primary
source for the statement, let me know).  I was on vacation when
CHRISTMA hit, but was involved to some extent in the followup
investigations.  As far as I know, VNET was never shut down as a
whole; it was even more a distributed system then than it is now, and
I don't think anyone knew then of a way to shut it all down if they'd
wanted to!  The various systems that were hit responded in various
ways.  Some wrote little demons that went through and purged any
CHRISTMA EXECs that showed up in the spool, some that were lightly hit
did this manually, and some that were very heavily hit no doubt
elected to shut down while dealing with it.  But the story that "IBM's
internal network was completely shutdown" is a myth, as far as I
know...  DC

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