Gusano de Morris

From Hack Story

Lest we forget, today (04/11/98) was the 10th anniversary of the Internet Worm, released by Robert Tappan Morris, Jr.

Morris was the first person to be tried under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. His trial took place in Syracuse, NY (an hour or so north of Cornell University). He was sentenced to 3 years of probation and also paid a fine and did some community service. (Kevin Mitnick should be so lucky!)

Morris' worm exploited three known but un-patched security holes:

       - a hole in sendmail
       - a hole in finger
       - the use of .rhosts files

Estimates at the time were that around 6000 computers were infected. Because the Internet (and Usenet) was virtually useless during the few days the Worm was active, people working to eradicate the worm used BITNET mailing lists to communicate.

One of the major outcomes of the Internet Worm was the formation of CERT. At first, CERT was a non-profit affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University. Later, CERT was semi-privatized and became a multi-tiered membership organization.