Robert Tappan Morris
Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965 ) is an American computer scientist . Since 1999 he has been a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
He became known in 1989 as the author of Morris , the first computer worm to spread on the Internet.
Life
Morris gained some notoriety as a college student for programming the first computer worm that spread widely on the Internet when he released it on November 2, 1988. His father, Robert H. Morris, was the head of the National Computer Security Center, part of the National Security Agency (NSA) .
Morris graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in 1987 and then Cornell University .
After studying computer science, Morris founded the software company Viaweb with Paul Graham in 1995 for building online shops, which they sold to Yahoo in 1998 for $ 49 million . He received his doctorate (topic: Scalable TCP Congestion Control) in 1999 from Harvard University at HT Kung , became a professor at MIT in the same year and has held a tenure there since 2006 . Together with Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell and Jessica Livingston , he founded the Y Combinator incubator in 2006 . In 2010, Morris received the Mark Weiser Award .
In 2015 he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and in 2019 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering .
The Morris worm
While studying at Cornell University, he was identified on July 26, 1989 as the release of the Morris worm . The worm spread rapidly, causing up to ten percent of all Internet traffic at the time. Morris was found guilty on January 22, 1990 and, as a direct consequence, was expelled from the university for one year. The sentence was later announced, he was given a three-year suspended sentence , 400 hours of social work, and a $ 10,050 fine. Morris also paid the court fees of approximately $ 150,000.
literature
- Katie Hafner and John Markoff : Cyberpunk. The world of hackers . Econ Verlag , Düsseldorf 1993, ISBN 3-612-26035-9 .
Individual evidence
Web links
- Homepage of Robert Tappan Morris
- US v. Robert Tappan Morris (1990 verdict)
- Description of the worm
- Analysis of the worm (English, PDF, 196 KiB)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Morris, Robert Tappan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American computer scientist, author of the first internet worm |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 8, 1965 |