Morris Worm

 

One of the first worms distributed over the internet, the Morris worm, named after its creator, Robert Morris, a graduate student at Cornell University, was released on November 2, 1988. Morris, now a professor at MIT, claimed the worm was intended to demonstrate security flaws in Unix systems. However, a coding error resulting from an attempt to prevent the worm from being easily disabled led to a massive denial-of-service attack, which was estimated to have infected 6,000 computers. This figure was arrived at by multiplying all the computers that were estimated to be connected to the internet by 10% — the same way that the effect of the ILOVEYOU virus and several others were estimated. The US Government said the damage cost between $100,000 and $10,000,000, and the Morris worm resulted in the first conviction under the 1986 US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.