Robert Tappan Morris, also known as rtm, (born November 8, 1965), is an associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Institute's department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. [1] He is best known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet. The Morris worm or Internet worm was one of the first Computer worms distributed via the Internet; it is considered the first worm and was certainly the Year 1988 ( MCMLXXXVIII) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link displays 1988 Gregorian calendar) A computer worm is a self-replicating Computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other nodes (computer terminals on the network and it may do so without The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks He is the son of Robert Morris, the former chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center, a division of the National Security Agency (NSA). Robert "Bob" H Morris is an American Cryptographer. He received a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Harvard University The National Computer Security Center, part of the National Security Agency, was established in 1981 and is responsible for testing and evaluating computer equipment for use The National Security Agency/ Central Security Service ( NSA/CSS) is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States government
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The worm
Morris created the worm while he was a graduate student at Cornell University. The Morris worm or Internet worm was one of the first Computer worms distributed via the Internet; it is considered the first worm and was certainly the The original intent, according to him, was to gauge the size of the Internet. The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks He released the worm from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to conceal the fact that it actually originated from Cornell. The worm was designed to count how many machines were connected to the internet. Unknown to Morris, the worm had a design flaw. The worm was programmed to check each computer it found to determine if the infection was already present. However, Morris believed that some administrators might try to defeat his worm by instructing the computer to report a false positive. To compensate for this possibility, Morris directed the worm to copy itself anyway, fourteen percent of the time, no matter the response to the infection-status interrogation. This level of replication proved excessive and the worm spread rapidly, infecting several thousand computers. It was estimated that the cost of repair for the damage caused by the worm at each system ranged from $200 to more than $53,000. The worm exploited several vulnerabilities to gain entry to targeted systems, including:
- a hole in the debug mode of the Unix sendmail program,
- a buffer overrun hole in the fingerd network service,
- the transitive trust enabled by people setting up rexec/rsh network logins without password requirements. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer Sendmail is a Mail transfer agent (MTA that supports many kinds of mail transfer and delivery including the overwhelmingly popular SMTP. In Computer security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomalous condition where a process attempts to In Computer networking, the Name/Finger protocol and the Finger user information protocol are simple Network protocols for the exchange of human-oriented rsh ( r emote sh ell) is a Command line Computer program which can execute shell commands as another user, and on
RTM was viewed as a hero in some circles because he exposed a major security flaw in the UNIX system. In other words, his worm exposed what greater security steps needed to take place. He served no jail time, and was only sentenced to community service and probation. If anything, he seemed to be spurred on to even greater success. Eventually, he sold his company to Yahoo for $48 million.
Biography
1987 - Received his A.B. from Harvard
1988 - Released the Morris worm (when he was a graduate student at Cornell)
1989 - Indicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 on July 26, 1989 - the first person to be indicted under this Act. The Morris worm or Internet worm was one of the first Computer worms distributed via the Internet; it is considered the first worm and was certainly the The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a law passed by the United States Congress in 1986 intended to reduce " hacking " of computer Year 1986 ( MCMLXXXVI) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar) Events 657 - Battle of Siffin. 811 - Battle of Pliska; Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus Year 1989 ( MCMLXXXIX) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar)
1990 - Convicted and sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of community service, a fine of $10,050 and the cost of his supervision.
1995 - Cofounded, with Paul Graham, Viaweb start-up company that made software for building online stores
1998 - Viaweb sold for $48 million to Yahoo, who renamed the software "Yahoo! Store"
1999 - Received Ph. Paul Graham (born 1964 is a Programmer, Venture capitalist and Essayist, known for his work on Lisp. Viaweb is a web-based application that allows users to build and host their own Online stores with little effort and technical expertise directly from their Viaweb is a web-based application that allows users to build and host their own Online stores with little effort and technical expertise directly from their D. in Applied Sciences from Harvard
1999 - Appointed as a professor at MIT.
2005 - Cofounded with Paul Graham, Y Combinator venture capital firm
2006 - Awarded tenure[1]
2006 - Technical advisor for Meraki Networks[2]. Y Combinator is a seed-stage Startup funding firm, started in 2005 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, and Meraki is a network equipment manufacturer that provides hardware and software for Wireless community networks It creates a wireless network that coordinates with Meraki servers
2008 - Released with Paul Graham, Arc programming language, a Lisp dialect[3]
His principal research interest is computer network architectures which includes work on distributed hash tables such as Chord and wireless mesh networks such as Roofnet. Arc is a dialect of the Lisp programming language now under development by Paul Graham and Robert Morris. A programming language is an Artificial language that can be used to write programs which control the behavior of a machine particularly a Computer. Lisp (or LISP) is a family of Computer Programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully parenthesized syntax Distributed hash tables ( DHTs) are a class of decentralized distributed systems that provide a lookup service similar to a Hash table: ( name, Chord is one of the original Distributed hash table protocols Mesh networking is a way to route data voice and instructions between nodes.
Morris is a longtime friend of Paul Graham. Paul Graham (born 1964 is a Programmer, Venture capitalist and Essayist, known for his work on Lisp. Graham dedicated his book ANSI Common Lisp to him, and named the programming language that generates the online stores' web pages RTML in his honor. RTML is a proprietary Programming language used exclusively by Yahoo! 's Yahoo! Store and Yahoo! Site Web hosting services Graham also lists Morris as one of his personal heroes saying "he's never wrong. "
References
- ^ Robert Morris biography, mit. edu
See also
External links
- Judgement in the "U.S. v. Robert Tappan Morris" case
- The Robert Morris Internet Worm
- A Report on the Internet Worm
- Crisis and Aftermath - The Internet Worm Paper
Bibliography
Hafner, Katie; Markoff, John (1991). Below is a list of computer criminals with a conviction in a court of law See also Timeline of computer security hacker history Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. ISBN 0-671-68322-5.
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