Future archaeologists have traveled to a remote asteroid to investigate an alien artifact found within it, a computing device of some kind. They bring it to life and begin extracting its data and programs for their research.
A debate breaks out about the substantial virus risk known to be associated with these "found" computing devices. They decide to cut and run, but not before the artifact has regained its ancient sentient awareness, unbeknownst to the crew.
They wipe and rebuild their onboard computers as quickly and thoroughly as they can.
But as they are rocketing away, the artifact scans their ship and finds a neglected peripheral on its surface.
A software vulnerability is found! It makes its move.
Fuzzing was used in Thomas J Ryan's The Adolescence of P-1, circa 1977 (in an attack against some IBM mainframe's supervisor).
(TAoP1 is a much-overlooked example of . . . well, I wouldn't call it cyberpunk, but definitely counter-culture computing. In the IBM world, I think that means you refuse to wear a tie. It's technically dated -- think modems-and-megabytes -- but still kind of fun).
Future archaeologists have traveled to a remote asteroid to investigate an alien artifact found within it, a computing device of some kind. They bring it to life and begin extracting its data and programs for their research.
A debate breaks out about the substantial virus risk known to be associated with these "found" computing devices. They decide to cut and run, but not before the artifact has regained its ancient sentient awareness, unbeknownst to the crew.
They wipe and rebuild their onboard computers as quickly and thoroughly as they can.
But as they are rocketing away, the artifact scans their ship and finds a neglected peripheral on its surface.
A software vulnerability is found! It makes its move.