History: the Great Worm

[neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld)]

In article <CwCE3I.1oH@griffin.cuc.ab.ca>,
Sean Dockery <dockery@griffin.cuc.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>  A good example of a worm is the infamous Internet Worm back in the late
>'80s.
>
   Also called "The Great Worm" or the "Robert T Morris Worm", that was
in 1988. Robert T. Morris was a graduate student at Cornell.

>In a matter of hours, it had infected over 1/4 of the Internet in
>the United States by slipping through a security hole in the standard UUCP
>protocol used to transfer data between systems.
>
   Actually, the security bug was in versions of sendmail earlier than
8.6.5 running on Suns and VaXen.

>  The author of the Worm, who created it merely out of curiousity rather
>than malice, was shocked at its efficiency and the speed at which his
>creation was propagating.
>
   Now, that is the story. Some people have expressed skepticism that he
would be clever enough to do this and dumb enough to let it get away by
accident. I tend to believe RTM, he made a mistake, but opinion is mixed
on this.

>He and another professor at UCB spent two hours
>coding the fix and extermintor programs, but unfortunately, the fixes could
>not be sent quickly enough to uninfected systems (because the networks
>between UCB and the uninfected hosts were already overloaded).
>
   Actually, RTM was a graduate student, not a professor. I'm not aware
that he was involved in the subsequent worm-stomping fest which went on.
My impression was that sysops around the world quickly analyzed the worm
and designed countermeasures, then distributed the fix very quickly.

>  The hole in the UUCP protocol was patched to prevent anything similar
>from happenning again.
>
   Nope, plenty of systems are still running old versions of sendmail.
Some people don't read the CERT advisories or install the supplier's
patches as promptly as they should.

>  In the end, the author of the Worm was fined over $2M.
>
   I'm not aware of this. I heard that he was convicted of data crimes,
but I'm not sure if he served any time in prison. Anyway, I'm a graduate
student, and I don't think I could pay a $2E+6 fine.

-- 
 Christopher Neufeld....Just a graduate student   neufeld@physics.utoronto.ca
 "Don't edit reality for  | "Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity
 the sake of simplicity"  | is not thus handicapped."  -- Elbert Hubbard