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.