What
a Worm!
Leslie
K. Penny
Module
3 Research Assignment 2
Chancellor
University
What
a Worm!
What is a worm, anyways?
This paper will answer that question and more, including the originator
of the worm and his biography, his importance in this topic and why he is
mentioned in this course, the severity of his crime and how it affected the
public as well as an understanding of his punishment and if it fit the crime
conducted. A comparison will be given in
reference to the originator and other modern day offenders that conduct the
same crime as well as if the originator is still a threat to our society.
Back to the question at hand. What is a worm? According to TechTerms.com, a worm is "a
type of computer virus" that "tunnels" into a computer's memory
and hard drive and duplicates itself without altering files but since they
duplicate many times over, they take up the rest of any remaining memory or
space left on the hard disk (Worm, 2012). Once the worm has ate up all remaining memory
and space, it makes the computer run slow and/or crash, it could take longer
than normal to access files and one could have problems with saving or creating
new files until the worm has been scrubbed from the hard drive (Worm, 2012).
The inventor of the first nasty little "bug" was Robert Tappan Morris, aka RTM who he will
be called here on out. At the time of
the worms conception in 1988 when RTM was only 23 years old (Facts about Robert Tappan Morris, 2012), he was a graduate
student at Cornell University who studied in Computer Science (The Robert Morris Internet Worm). On this significant date, November 2, 1988,
RTM "wrote an experimental, self-replicating, self-propagating program"
(The Robert Morris Internet Worm) that was
appropriately named a worm that he let loose on the internet. RTM's impressive feat of computer science
wizardry is the very reason why he is mentioned in this course.
RTM led the way for others to discover security
weaknesses throughout out computers and systems. According to the article, "The Robert
Morris Internet Worm", RTM was taken aback by the unexpected rate his worm
was replicating and re-infecting machines upon its release from MIT, which he
thought would disguise the fact it actually came from Cornell. His worm affected the public because it made
some machines "catatonic" and crashed others throughout the country
and with this came the realization that he needed to come up with a resolution
but by the time he a message was sent over the net, it was too late (The Robert Morris Internet Worm). The damage had been done, many sites had
already been infected including universities, the military and medical research
centers with an estimated cost of fixing the worm at each installation ranging
from "$200 to more than $53,000" (The Robert Morris Internet Worm).
RTM's worm worked as well as it did because he used a
hole in the debug mode for the Unix send mail program to his advantage
"which runs on a system and waits for others systems to connect to it and
give it mail, and a hole in the finger daemon fingered, which serves finger
requests" (The Robert Morris Internet Worm). A friend at Harvard helped RTM come up with
his solution that came too late but individuals at Berkeley and MIT used copies
of the virus to actively disassemble it, to put it back into its source form in
order to figure out how the worm worked, however, a team from Berkeley, after
12 arduous hours, came up with steps to slow down the spread of the virus and
after a few days things got back to normal and the question began circulating:
Who did this? (The Robert Morris Internet Worm).
After an investigation was conducted and evidence
gathered, RTM "was convicted of violating the computer Fraud and Abuse Act
(Title 18)" (The Robert Morris Internet Worm). He was sentenced to three years' probation
and ordered to do 400 hours of community service as well as given a fine of
$10,050 and the costs of his supervision added to it (The Robert Morris Internet Worm). RTM appealed his case in December of 1990,
saying it was merely an experiment that went wrong (Top 10 Hackers, 2012) but his appeal "was rejected the following March" (The Robert Morris Internet Worm). RTM went on to earn his Ph. D. from Harvard
University, made his millions designing software, and is currently a computer
science professor at MIT, interestingly enough (Top 10 Hackers, 2012).
This writer feels his punishment did indeed fit the
crime. The intent (supposedly) wasn't to
be as destructive as it turned out to be and it did broach the subject as to
how secure our machines are in the first place by exposing security flaws
leading the way for more in depth security research and development . However, his actions did lead the way for
others to use this technology and resources to act maliciously. Modern day offenders are not experimenting
with hopes of minimal damage. Modern day
offenders have intent and illegal motives and many do it solely for the purpose
of gaining access to information such as passwords, credit card numbers,
personal information, etc. for financial gain.
To conclude, Robert Tappan Morris discovered a very nasty
little bug that got him into some hot water but didn't really impact his future
in a negative way. He apparently has
some prestige becoming a professor himself at the very University he released
his worm from. He didn't let his worm
end his educational aspirations by attaining a higher education and still does
what he's made for, designing software.
Will he use this knowledge some time down the road as a threat to our
society? Who's to say, really. This writer doesn't believe so but only time
will tell.
Works Cited
(n.d.). Retrieved 11 25, 2012, from The Robert Morris
Internet Worm:
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/morris-worm.html
Facts about Robert
Tappan Morris. (2012). Retrieved 11
25, 2012, from Evi Technologies Ltd: http://www.evi.com/q/facts_about__robert_tappan_morris
Top 10 Hackers. (2012). Retrieved 11 25, 2012, from SCI Question
Everything: http://science.discovery.com/top-ten/2009/hackers/hackers-01.html
Worm. (2012). Retrieved 11 25, 2012, from TechTerms.com:
http://www.techterms.com/definition/worm
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