Computer Worm - History

History

The actual term "worm"' was first used in John Brunner's 1975 novel, The Shockwave Rider. In that novel, Nichlas Haflinger designs and sets off a data-gathering worm in an act of revenge against the powerful men who run a national electronic information web that induces mass conformity. "You have the biggest-ever worm loose in the net, and it automatically sabotages any attempt to monitor it... There's never been a worm with that tough a head or that long a tail!"

On November 2, 1988, Robert Tappan Morris, a Cornell University computer science graduate student, unleashed what became known as the Morris worm, disrupting an estimated 10% of the computers then on the Internet and prompting the formation of the CERT Coordination Center and Phage mailing list. Morris himself became the first person tried and convicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Read more about this topic:  Computer Worm

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)

    All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!
    Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)