Morris Worm - Effects of The Worm

Effects of The Worm

It is usually reported that around 6,000 major UNIX machines were infected by the Morris worm. Paul Graham has claimed that

"I was there when this statistic was cooked up, and this was the recipe: someone guessed that there were about 60,000 computers attached to the Internet, and that the worm might have infected ten percent of them."

The U.S. GAO put the cost of the damage at $100,000–10,000,000.

The Morris worm prompted DARPA to fund the establishment of the CERT/CC at Carnegie Mellon University to give experts a central point for coordinating responses to network emergencies. Gene Spafford also created the Phage mailing list to coordinate a response to the emergency.

Robert Morris was tried and convicted of violating United States Code: Title 18 (18 U.S.C. § 1030), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. in United States v Morris. After appeals he was sentenced to three years probation, 400 hours of community service, and a fine of $10,000.

The Morris worm has sometimes been referred to as the "Great Worm", because of the devastating effect it had on the Internet at that time, both in overall system downtime and in psychological impact on the perception of security and reliability of the Internet. The name was derived from the "Great Worms" of Tolkien: Scatha and Glaurung.

Read more about this topic:  Morris Worm

Famous quotes containing the words effects of the, effects of, effects and/or worm:

    Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India-rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Like the effects of industrial pollution ... the AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The dropout can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of—career, ambition, conspicuous consumption. The effects of hippie sanctimony can only be felt in the context of others who plunder his lifestyle for what they find good or profitable, a process known as rip-off by the hippie, who will not see how savagely he has pillaged intricate and demanding civilizations for his own parodic lifestyle.
    Germaine Greer (b. 1939)

    Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.
    Georges Bataille (1897–1962)