ARMM
 n.

    [acronym, ?Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation?] A Usenet cancelbot
    created by Dick Depew of Munroe Falls, Ohio. ARMM was intended to
    automatically cancel posts from anonymous-posting sites. Unfortunately, the
    robot's recognizer for anonymous postings triggered on its own
    automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this stroke of
    programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it
    broke loose on the night of March 30, 1993 and proceeded to spam
    news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages.

    ARMM's bug produced a recursive cascade of messages each of which
    mechanically added text to the ID and Subject and some other headers of its
    parent. This produced a flood of messages in which each header took up
    several screens and each message ID and subject line got longer and longer
    and longer.

    Reactions varied from amusement to outrage. The pathological messages
    crashed at least one mail system, and upset people paying line charges for
    their Usenet feeds. One poster described the ARMM debacle as ?instant
    Usenet history? (also establishing the term despew), and it has since
    been widely cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of
    good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network. The Usenet thread
    on the subject is archived here. Compare Great Worm; sorcerer's
    apprentice mode. See also software laser, network meltdown.

Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation
ARMM

    (ARMM) A Usenet robot created by Dick Depew of
   Munroe Falls, Ohio.  ARMM was intended to automatically cancel
   posts from anonymous-posting sites.  Unfortunately, the
   robot's recogniser for anonymous postings triggered on its own
   automatically-generated control messages!  Transformed by this
   stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of
   Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of
   1993-03-31 and proceeded to spam <news:news.admin.policy>
   with a recursive explosion of over 200 messages.

   Reactions varied from amusement to outrage.  The pathological
   messages crashed at least one mail system, and upset people
   paying line charges for their Usenet feeds.  One poster
   described the ARMM debacle as "instant Usenet history" (also
   establishing the term despew), and it has since been widely
   cited as a cautionary example of the havoc the combination of
   good intentions and incompetence can wreak on a network.

   Compare Great Worm; sorcerer's apprentice mode.  See also
   software laser, network meltdown.

   (1996-01-08)