Cybersecurity Breach Stories
One true story that shows what mainstream generative technology leads to in terms of online security breaches is the story of the Internet's first worm.
In 1988, 60000 computers were connected to the Internet, but not all of them were PCs. Most were mainframes, minicomputers and professional workstations. On November 2, 1988, the computers acted strangely. They started to slow down, because they were running a malicious code that demanded processor time and that spread itself to other computers. The purpose of such software was to transmit a copy to the machines and run in parallel with existing software and repeat all over again. It exploited a flaw in a common e-mail transmission program running on a computer by rewriting it to facilitate its entrance or it guessed users' password, because, at that time, passwords were simple (e.g. username 'harry' with a password '...harry') or were obviously related to a list of 432 common passwords tested at each computer.
The software was traced back to 23 year old Cornell University graduate student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr.. When questioned about the motive for his actions, Morris said 'he wanted to count how many machines were connected to the Internet'. His explanation was verified with his code, but it turned out to be buggy, nevertheless.
Read more about this topic: Computer Security
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