PERSONAL BACKGROUND
- NAME: Robert Tapan Morris
- BORN: November 8,1965
- WHERE: United States
- OCCUPATION: Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Partner, Combinator
What did he do?
l Back in 1988, while a graduate student at Cornell University, Morris created the first worm and released it on the Internet. He claimed it was all an experiment gone awry, a test to see how big the then-new Internet was. The worm turned out to be more than a test: it replicated quickly, slowing computers to the point of non-functionality and virtually crippling the Internet. He was eventually fined and sentenced to three years probation.
The Morris Worm Cripples Internet (Nov. 2, 1988 Morris Worm incident)
Robert Tappan Morris was a Harvard graduate and Cornell graduate student when he developed the first widely spread Internet “worm.” He released it on Nov. 2, 1988, using MIT’s systems to disguise the fact that he was a Cornell student.
The worm was intended to be harmless, but Morris made a mistake in writing it. He hoped that only one copy of the worm would infect each computer, but in an attempt to circumvent computers that would say it already had a copy, he “programmed the worm to duplicate itself every seventh time it received a ‘yes’ response,”.
The Morris worm began replicating itself at a far faster rate than he intended, flooding hard drives and causing extensive damage. A friend of Morris tried to send out a warning to other users, but many systems had already shut down.
In just a few days, the Morris worm traveled across Arpanet, the precursor to today’s Internet, and infected more than 6,000 computers at universities, research centers and military installations.
The cost in removing the worm from each computer ranged from $200 to more than $53,000. According to estimates by the U.S. General Accounting Office, between $100,000 and $10 million was lost due to lack of access to the Internet.
Morris was soon identified as the source of the worm, and authorities sought to indict him under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which outlawed gaining unauthorized access to federal computers.
It took prosecutors eight months to hand down an indictment because there was “an internal debate over whether it might be impossible to prove the charges,” reported The New York Times. Prosecutors had to prove that “Morris intended to cripple the computer network.”
Morris was found guilty in 1990. He was given a light sentence: a $10,050 fine, 400 hours of community service, and a three-year probation.
White hat, gray hat or black hat hacker?
The biggest implication of the Morris worm was that the Internet was very small and it was considered a friendly place. This attack made it clear that there were some people on the internet who didn’t have the best interests of the world in mind. This made it clear we had to think about security.
Morris’ motive was to show there were security problems on the Internet that needed to be taken seriously, but he didn’t do the arithmetic right on the exponential growth” of the worm he developed.
Based on what I’ve read, I don’t think anyone believed that Robert was trying to destroy the Internet. That time he was just a student who committed mistake. He’s done nothing in his career to take advantage or to gain from the incident that’s why for me, Robert Morris is a white hacker.
How did he become famous?
l He was known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet—and subsequently becoming the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
l His father was the late Robert Morris, a coauthor of UNIX and the former chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center, a division of the National Security Agency (NSA).
Where is he now?
l Morris currently teaches computer science at MIT.
