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On November 2, 1988, the Internet crashed under the impact of a worm written by Robert Tappan Morris Jr. (RTM), a 23-year-old Cornell graduate student whose father worked for the NSA. The worm largely took advantage of holes in the 'sendmail' and 'finger' programs on UNIX machines. Factoids: - RTM's father
- RTM's father worked at the NSA (National Security Agency)
- release point
- The worm was released from MIT in order to conceal its true origins at Cornell.
- too good
- A bug in the code created a condition that the worm would attempt to infect previously infected machines over and over, until so many worms were running on a machine that it hung.
- communications disruption
- Cleanup would have been a lot simpler (as people found fixes), but since the net was clogged and people disconnected from the net, solutions couldn't be disseminated.
- bugs
- The worm took advantage of bugs/backdoors in sendmail and finger daemons.
- punishment
- RTM was fined $10k, sentenced to three years probation, and 400 hours of community service.
- CERT
- The worm lead to the creation of CERT, the premier clearing house for security related information.
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