Archive for October, 2008

Happy Birthday Internet Worm

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This weekend culminates the 20th year of the existence of the Internet Worm. The very first, major worm that proliferated on the Internet through infection. Even though the internet has evolved into something much more complex, worms are still destructive, ever more complicated than the first worms that littered the net. It still is a headache for system administrators. Though it hasnt gone on headlines over the years but the worms are far too difficult to repair now than two decades ago. Robert Tappan Morris launched in 1988, the very first worm in the form of an application designed to count the total number of systems on the internet at that time. It was created to propagate across Unix systems by using certain system vulnerabilities in how r-services authenticate internet connections. Due to a bug in its design, the Worm propagated more than the necessary attempts. It made the infected computers much more slower because of resource usage. Morris was caught eventually. The worms that followed were destructive as ever, the Melissa, I Love You viruses made headlines due to the fact that it hit critical institutions in the US.

Posted by Greg on October 7th, 2008