So yesterday saw the 20th birthday of modern computer malware in the form of the Morris worm. On November 2, 1988, Robert Tappan Morris (aka. rtm) accidently set free the first of the modern computer worms.

 

The worm that was originally written according to Morris as a means to gauge the size of the Internet and not cause any damage was released. The worm was originally designed to exploit a number of issues in Unix Sendmail, Finger, rsh/rexec and weak passwords, and employ some techniques to prevent re-infection of already infected hosts.

Alas there was the oblatory bugs that come with malware that resulted in the Morris worm actually re-infecting some hosts over and over which would eventually render the hosts unusable.

What this started is now a multi-billion dollar industry and has formed the basis for many and IT Security Professionals first introduction to the problem of Security.