Morris made history as the first person to be penalized under the computer fraud and abuse law.
Robert Tappan Morris, one of the most educated and equipped hackers in the world of cybercrime, was born in 1965 in the USA. His father was one of the top scientists of the National Security Agency (NSA). Due to his father's job, Morris, who started to be interested in science and computer software at a young age, grew up as a child who was extremely curious about computers and communication technologies.
Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating the Morris worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet.
Having completed his undergraduate education in the Computer Science department of Harvard University, Morris was not content with this and started his master's education in the Computer Science department of Cornell University. At the age of twenty-three, Morris, who was well equipped, decided to work on an experimental, self-replicating, self-propagating program that could also be injected into the Internet as the school's master project. He started making his first trials in 1988. This program was named the Morris Worm thanks to his inventor.
He planned to test it on Harvard University's internet system instead of Cornell University as the worm's first use case. Morris's intent was to conceal both his identity and that the worm came from Cornell. This worm, which was sent to Harvard's system, was spreading and replicating so fast that 10% of internet-connected systems across the country were either completely broken or disabled.
Panicked when the things he planned did not happen, Morris wanted to show the solution by sending an anonymous e-mail to all users over the Harvard network in order to prevent the virus from spreading further. But that was impossible because Harvard's network went down and the mail couldn't reach anyone.
The worm, which spread at an unstoppable speed, turned the websites of countless institutions upside down, from universities to military institutions, from hospitals to police departments. Among them was Unix Sendmail. The cost of this cyber disaster was between $100,000 and $10 million, officials estimated. The Morris worm's first run-of-control experiment had caused such serious damage. After admitting his guilt, Morris made his mark in history as the first person to be sentenced under the computer fraud and abuse law.