[ILUG] The 1988 Internet Worm

[Thomas B. Quillinan]

On Monday 05 March 2001 12:28, Hugh Mc Gauran wrote:
> I have a project for Professional Issues in Software Engineering here in
> UL on the 1988 Internet worm.I have to discuss it under the following
> headings..
>
> Computer Ethics
> Computer Contracts
> Intellectual Property
> Software safety
> Codes of conduct and practice
> Data protection
>
>
> considering that this was the first major attack on the internet I am
> assuming that a lot of ye have some form of opinion on the matter.
>
> any help would be greatly appreciated.
>

Read "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll - In the Eplogue he deals with the 
Worm and describes how it was defeated. Otherwise its a great read.
Personally I believe it was a prank gone wrong. He (RTM Jnr) made an attempt 
to limit the spread - It didn't reinfect hosts except every seventh one - to 
ensure that it wasn't being faked - but didn't realise the extent it was 
going to effect the net. He (through a friend) posted the code to a usenet 
group but it wasn't received until after the crisis - due to computers being 
down.

> One theory we have on the ethics part of it is:
> The kid who did it (Robert Morris) was the son of an ex-Chief scientist
> of the NSA...maybe he did it to get at his father..

Actually what I've heard about it is that he may have stolen some of the code 
from daddy :-) The dictionary attacks etc...

tom.
-- 
regards,

Thomas B. Quillinan
Centre for Unified Computing (http://www.cuc.ucc.ie)
Go to http://www.csn.ul.ie/cgi-bin/finger.cgi?tom for my PGP Key