Great Worm
Great Worm: n. The 1988 Internet worm perpetrated by
RTM. This is a play on Tolkien (compare
elvish, elder days). In the
fantasy history of his Middle Earth books, there were dragons powerful
enough to lay waste to entire regions; two of these (Scatha and Glaurung)
were known as “the Great Worms”. This usage expresses the
connotation that the RTM crack was a sort of devastating watershed event in
hacker history; certainly it did more to make non-hackers nervous about the
Internet than anything before or since.
Courtesy of 'The Jargon File 4.4.7'
