3 ms·

Happy 20th birthday, Internet worm

4 points by alecco 18y ago

alecco 18y ago
(A better link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/103008-morris-worm.html http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/103008-morris-worm.htm... ) When my friends and I got our hands on the source code of the worm it took us a while to understand it. It was ahead of anything else we had seen before and it sure pushed a few of us towards computer security. And it served as an early wake up call for sysops, something the Windows camp for example got too late. Now virus and worm researchers have strong and careful methodology. Something particularly interesting today is mobile phone security research performed on Faraday cages: http://radian.org/notebook/van-helsingfors http://radian.org/notebook/van-helsingfors (scroll close to bottom.)
satyajit 18y ago
I don't hear attacks like those mentioned in this article nowadays, prolly because of 1) widespread usage of FF/Thunderbird (IE/Outlook is still in the map thanks to BIG corporates) 2) More Macs 3) Hackers have been force-civilized at a correctional facility called Y-combinator HN.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  I don't think the first worm is comparable to modern viruses, at all. For one thing, the intention was (mostly) innocent, but things got out of control (young folks are often completely blind to the "what's the worst that could happen?" side of things). For another, most folks viewed it as a necessary bump in the road on the path to wider spread Internet usage. There were numerous serious security flaws in the wild that simply were not being patched. I remember the aftermath of the worm, and most of my geeky friends thought rtm got a bum wrap over the whole thing, when it became a legal matter. (We were all doing far more willfully malicious things in our small town way. Phreaking, warez, etc. was how nerds without access to the Internet got up to no good back then.) The worm is also part of why modern BIND and Sendmail have reasonably good security records. No one took security seriously until then...but for the Internet to be as successful as it has been, security has to be the first and last thing any developer thinks about.
  - nailer 18y ago
    BIND 9, the security-based rewrite, is relatively recent. Sendmail X, the same, isn't in widespread use at all yet (I'm not 100% certain it's even out). The worm (as worms do) exploited vulnerabilities, which means it wasn't exactly intended to have the consent of the people whose machines were exploited. Also, unverified from Wikipedia - "The worm was released from MIT to disguise the fact that the worm originally came from Cornell." Which seems to indicate that Morris indeed knew what he was doing would incure someone's ire. Though I do agree the worm, like so many telnet password sniffing attempts later on, raised awareness of security.
pg 18y ago
He wasn't "caught." He turned himself in.

4 points by alecco 18y ago

(A better link: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/103008-morris-worm.html http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/103008-morris-worm.htm... ) When my friends and I got our hands on the source code of the worm it took us a while to understand it. It was ahead of anything else we had seen before and it sure pushed a few of us towards computer security. And it served as an early wake up call for sysops, something the Windows camp for example got too late. Now virus and worm researchers have strong and careful methodology. Something particularly interesting today is mobile phone security research performed on Faraday cages: http://radian.org/notebook/van-helsingfors http://radian.org/notebook/van-helsingfors (scroll close to bottom.)

satyajit 18y ago

I don't hear attacks like those mentioned in this article nowadays, prolly because of 1) widespread usage of FF/Thunderbird (IE/Outlook is still in the map thanks to BIG corporates) 2) More Macs 3) Hackers have been force-civilized at a correctional facility called Y-combinator HN.

SwellJoe 18y ago
I don't think the first worm is comparable to modern viruses, at all. For one thing, the intention was (mostly) innocent, but things got out of control (young folks are often completely blind to the "what's the worst that could happen?" side of things). For another, most folks viewed it as a necessary bump in the road on the path to wider spread Internet usage. There were numerous serious security flaws in the wild that simply were not being patched. I remember the aftermath of the worm, and most of my geeky friends thought rtm got a bum wrap over the whole thing, when it became a legal matter. (We were all doing far more willfully malicious things in our small town way. Phreaking, warez, etc. was how nerds without access to the Internet got up to no good back then.) The worm is also part of why modern BIND and Sendmail have reasonably good security records. No one took security seriously until then...but for the Internet to be as successful as it has been, security has to be the first and last thing any developer thinks about.
- nailer 18y ago
  BIND 9, the security-based rewrite, is relatively recent. Sendmail X, the same, isn't in widespread use at all yet (I'm not 100% certain it's even out). The worm (as worms do) exploited vulnerabilities, which means it wasn't exactly intended to have the consent of the people whose machines were exploited. Also, unverified from Wikipedia - "The worm was released from MIT to disguise the fact that the worm originally came from Cornell." Which seems to indicate that Morris indeed knew what he was doing would incure someone's ire. Though I do agree the worm, like so many telnet password sniffing attempts later on, raised awareness of security.

pg 18y ago

He wasn't "caught." He turned himself in.