In 1988, the digital world faced its first major cybersecurity incident when the "Morphis Worm" infected thousands of computers across the United States. Contrary to popular belief, however, the Morris Worm was not spread via email but rather through vulnerabilities in the UNIX systems' network services. Created by Robert Tappan Morris, a graduate student at Cornell University, the worm was originally intended to measure the size of the internet. Unfortunately, due to a programming error, it replicated excessively, slowing down computers to the point of un-usability and effectively creating the first distributed denial of service.
Morris deployed the worm from MIT to disguise its origin. It exploited known vulnerabilities in the UNIX operating systems' Sendmail email server program, finger daemon, and weak rsh/rexec passwords. Once a computer was infected, the worm would attempt to find other machines to infect by sending a small piece of its code to other systems. These systems would then execute the code, allowing the worm to replicate and continue spreading.
Although the Morris Worm did not destroy files or permanently damage systems, its impact was profound, affecting approximately 6,000 computers—which constituted a significant portion of the internet at the time—and causing millions of dollars in lost productivity and system shutdowns. This incident served as a wake-up call about the importance of network security and led to the creation of the first Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), which was tasked with coordinating responses to future cybersecurity incidents.
The Morris Worm underscored the vulnerabilities inherent in widely networked systems and highlighted the unintended consequences of even seemingly benign digital experiments. In an ironic twist, the creator of the worm, Robert Morris, was convicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, marking the first prosecution under this law. Despite the controversy surrounding his actions, Morris later went on to have a respectable career in computer science, contributing significantly to cybersecurity and founding the influential startup Y Combinator. The legacy of the Morris Worm continues to influence discussions on ethical hacking, internet regulation, and the protection of cyberspace as a global resource.
