What is the WORM Virus?
Having problem with virus in your computer? Wonder who was the guy that started all this then look no father then Robert Tappan Morris, this man was indicted for spreading the Internet’s first worm virus, infecting more than 6,000 university, research centre and military computers.
A Harvard graduate and
Cornell graduate student when he developed the first widely spread Internet
worm, he released it on Nov. 2, 1988, using MIT’s systems. The worm was
intended to be harmless, but Morris made a mistake in writing it. He hoped that only one copy of the worm would infect each
computer, The Morris worm began replicating itself at a far faster rate than he
intended, flooding hard drives and causing extensive damage.
The cost in removing
the worm from each computer ranged from $200 to more than $53,000. According to
estimates by the U.S. General Accounting Office, between $100,000 and $10
million was lost due to lack of access to the Internet.
Morris was soon
identified as the source of the worm, and authorities sought to indict him
under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,
which outlawed gaining unauthorized access to federal computers.
Morris was found guilty in 1990. He was given a light sentence: a $10,050 fine, 400 hours
of community service, and three-year probation. Morris currently teaches computer science at
MIT. His personal Web site features some of his programming work
and his research papers.
A small tip on how to protect against them
Reference
- http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/tag/robert-tappan-morris/
- http://science.discovery.com/top-ten/2009/hackers/hackers-01.html
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