From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: crossd@gmail.com (Dan Cross) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2017 20:09:05 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 6:17 PM, Dave Horsfall 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.