Morris worm
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Morris worm
A famous occurrence of Internet sabotage. On November 2, 1988, Robert Morris, a Cornell University graduate student, unleashed a worm on the Internet that infected between 6,000 and 9,000 computers, overloading the entire Internet and causing many servers to fail as a result. As a computer science student, he was interested in determining how far and how quickly the worm could spread throughout the network, but he did not anticipate that it would cause as much trouble as it did due to his own misjudgment in coding the program's logic.
Morris was convicted and sentenced to three years of probation and 400 hours of community service as well as a $10,000 fine. This was a seminal incident in the history of Internet security that led directly to the founding of the CERT/CC a month later. See CERT, worm and denial-of-service attack.Copyright © 1981-2025 by The Computer Language Company Inc. All Rights reserved. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission from the publisher.
References in periodicals archive
(16) Carolyn Marsan, "The
Morris Worm Turns 20: Look What It's Done," Network World, October 30, 2008.
After the
Morris worm [1], which is considered to be the first computer worm on the Internet, there have been many problems caused by various Internet worms.
Morris Worm (also known as the Great Worm) How big is the Internet, you ask?
1988: The
Morris worm becomes the first worm to spread in the wild.
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