Morris Worm Indicted: First Cybercrime Prosecution
Robert Tappan Morris, a 23-year-old Cornell graduate student, released a self-replicating program onto the internet on November 2, 1988, that exploited vulnerabilities in Unix sendmail, fingerd, and rsh/rexec protocols. The worm was supposed to be harmless, merely counting how many computers were connected. But a coding error caused it to copy itself far more aggressively than intended, crashing roughly 6,000 machines, about 10% of the entire internet. Morris was indicted on July 26, 1989, becoming the first person convicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced to three years probation and a $10,000 fine. He later became a professor at MIT and co-founded Y Combinator, the world's most influential startup accelerator.
July 26, 1989
37 years ago
Key Figures & Places
Robert Tappan Morris, Jr.
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Morris worm
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Cornell University
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grand jury
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Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
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Robert Tappan Morris
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Grand jury
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Cornell University
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Robert Tappan Morris
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Morris worm
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Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
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