[TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm!

[clemc@ccc.com (Clem cole)]

+1

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not quite. 

> On Nov 1, 2017, at 8:09 PM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 6:17 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>> The infamous Morris Worm was released in 1988; making use of known
>> vulnerabilities in Sendmail/finger/RSH (and weak passwords), it took out a
>> metric shitload of SUN-3s and 4BSD Vaxen (the author claimed that it was
>> accidental, but the idiot hadn't tested it on an isolated network first). A
>> temporary "condom" was discovered by Rich Kulawiec with "mkdir /tmp/sh".
> 
> I feel obligated to mention out that Robert Tappan Morris is really
> very nice and quite humble in real life. As I understand it he's never
> sought to capitalize on his infamy from the worm, and while I've never
> asked him about it (I'm sure that would be very rude) I understand
> from some of his former students that he feels very contrite about the
> whole thing. He made a mistake when he was young; the same is true of
> many of us (myself included). His mistake had the misfortune of being
> much better known than those most of us make.
> 
> I should mention that I only know him slightly, but what I have seen
> of his personality reminds me very much of how I remember Dennis
> Ritchie: affable, kind and extremely approachable.
> 
>        - Dan C.