From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ken@google.com (Ken Thompson) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2017 18:39:54 -0700 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: <201711030053.vA30romM005084@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> References: <201711030053.vA30romM005084@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU> Message-ID: spafford was the prize witness for the offense at the trial. strident and evil. On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 5:53 PM, Doug McIlroy wrote: > I think "classlessness" is intened as an antonym to "classy". > > Spafford with high dudgeon called early for punishment. He had tempered > it somewhat by the time he wrote his CACM article, published in June > 1985. But still some animus shows through, in "even-handedly" > speculating about whether the worm was intended as a lark or as > something nefarious. He evidently had mellowed a lot by the > time of the last quotation below. > > In the CACM article Spaff quoted someone else as suggesting that > Morris did it to impress Jodie Foster, and he called Allman's > back door in Sendmail a debugging feature that people could > optionally turn off. As far as I know it was not disclosed that > DEBUG allowed remote control of Sendmail. In fact Sendmail was > so opaque that Dave Presotto declined to install it and wrote > his own (upas) for Research. > > I don't recall the cited "contest". And Dennis's reaction to > the CaCM article seems somwhat harsh. But the context is that > Spafford's overheated initial reaction did not win friends in > research. >> >> Can anyone remember or decipher what this was about??? >> >> Date: 24 Mar 90 06:52:43 GMT >> From: dmr at alice.att.com >> Subject: Re: Contest announcement >> To: misc-security at uunet.uu.net >> >> My own contest is "Most appalling display of classlessness in dealing with >> a serious subject." The nominees are: >> >> 1) National Center for Computer Crime Data, Security Magazine, and >> Gene Spafford, for their "How High Shall We Hang Robert Morris?" >> contest. >> >> 2) Gene Spafford, for the most tasteless article ever to appear in CACM >> (special credits for the Jodie Foster joke). >> >> Dennis Ritchie >> >> Some context maybe? >>> >>> “He has not tried to make any money or work in this area,” Purdue >>> University computer science professor Eugene Spafford said of Morris >>> in an interview with The Washington Post. “His behavior has been >>> consistent in supporting his defense: that it was an accident and he >>> felt badly about it. I think it’s very much to his credit that that has >>> been his behavior ever since.”