FBI interviews and computer file analysis would subsequently confirm Morris was the culprit. He was indicted under the rather freshly inked Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. After a court appearance for his misdemeanors in 1989, Morris ended up not with jail time, but with a fine, probation, and 400 hours of community service to complete.
Back in November 1988, the Internet bore little resemblance to what it is today. For example, the World Wide Web (WWW) wasn’t even a thing. Though the WWW would soon form the core experience for the first tide of surfers in the 90s.
At the time, the Internet’s backbone was the NSFNET, the recent successor to ARPANET . Its purpose was mostly to expand the prior backbone’s reach beyond military and defense institutions, and it more broadly embraced academia. While we are here, it is worth mentioning that NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, and succeeded by the commercial Internet, which emerged in the 1990s off the back of private ISPs and commercial backbones.
So, when we talk about 10% of the Internet being paralyzed by the Morris Worm, contemporary estimates are that about 6,000 of the approximately 60,000 connected systems were infected and impacted. Moreover, when we highlighted the potentially massive costs of this first worm propagating, estimates range from $100,000 to millions of dollars.
Computer worms have remained a scary phenomenon in recent times. For example, we reported on the first-generation AI worm, the Morris II generative AI worm, last year.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News , or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
sb5k I was working at DEC when the worm slithered its way across the Internet, as part of an engineering team. I also helped manage our Ultrix systems; our IT department knew VMS only. I don't remember which CPU was in our systems, but the worm was not able to run on our systems, but I did find it dropped in them. Reply
Gaston404 I completely disagree with the tone of the article. Depicting this as an accident without consequences and limited effect is simply incorrect. Back then as a part time job I managed some of the traffic routing through Washington DC. Mail relays were shutdown and backed up queues were spooked off to tape. By today’s standards the volume of traffic may seem trivial but when many of these links ran at 56kbps or less. It was a mess. The main way administrators communicated with each other was email. This also affected collaboration between University researchers and access to the NSF super computer centers. At the time rumors maintained that Morris used exploits that he learned from his father who had a consulting agreement with the NSA. So if this is true there is a certain level of non-originality. On one hand stronger persecution may have reduced follow on internet crime. On the other hand the fragility demonstrated by this crime, resulted in the creation of procedures to deal with outages. If anything the naive sense of trusted collaboration that pervaded the Internet started to fade. Reply
derekullo In 9 years, Tiktok has infected over 90% of the internet! Much slower but also much more insidious! Reply
DS426 derekullo said: In 9 years, Tiktok has infected over 90% of the internet! Much slower but also much more insidious! The next big social media craze is probably just around the corner. I shutter to think how ludicrous it will be. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/on-this-day-in-1988-the-morris-worm-slithered-out-and-sparked-a-new-era-in-cybersecurity-10-percent-of-the-internet-was-infected-within-24-hours#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
- TP-Link TL-WR3602BE Wi-Fi 7 Travel Router Review: Compact and packed with features, but average performance
- Chinese provinces offer steep power discounts to AI companies using China-made chips — country continues its aggressive push towards AI independence and homegro
- NVIDIA Launches Omniverse DSX Blueprint, Enabling Global AI Infrastructure Ecosystem to Build Gigawatt-Scale AI Factories
- Elon Musk alleges Sam Altman 'stole a non-profit' as AI bros spat over cancelled Tesla Roadster order
- 2008 financial crisis prophet bets against the AI bubble with potential $1 billion payout — Michael Burry reveals put options on Nvidia and Palantir
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.