The First Internet Worm (Morris Worm) - Computerphile

Поділитися
Вставка
  • Опубліковано 1 лис 2024

КОМЕНТАРІ • 165

  • @lukeb8349
    @lukeb8349 4 роки тому +340

    I studied at MIT and took two classes taught by Morris. Probably the best CS professor I had while there!

    • @hunterhicks6726
      @hunterhicks6726 4 роки тому +59

      I’m envious! I wish I could’ve done that. I was accepted by MIT but they confused my application with someone with a very similar name to mine (who was rejected). They decided to tell me 2 years after the fact.

    • @ciarfah
      @ciarfah 4 роки тому +25

      @@hunterhicks6726 I would be gutted

    • @hunterhicks6726
      @hunterhicks6726 4 роки тому +37

      @@ciarfah I was. I had an entire existential crisis by thinking about what could’ve been. I fell into a deep depression but things are better now. It still pisses me off to think about but I’ve learned to be happy about where I am.

    • @EmptyWell
      @EmptyWell 4 роки тому +6

      @@hunterhicks6726 did you pursue CS at another uni?

    • @hunterhicks6726
      @hunterhicks6726 4 роки тому +8

      @@EmptyWell yeah, CSSE Double major. A small (but well known) engineering school in Indiana.

  • @sundhaug92
    @sundhaug92 4 роки тому +208

    Fun fact: The Morris worm never hit Norwegian networks ... because one guy (Pål Spilling) got a call from the US and literally pulled the plug at Kjeller, thus disconnected Norway from the network. Spilling was pictured later holding the plug with the title "Avoided Norwegian data-catastrophe". Kjeller was the first part of the world outside of the US connected to the Arpanet and later the Internet, as it was the home of a Norwegian system for monitoring geophysical activity (useful for detecting nuclear tests)

    • @esquilax5563
      @esquilax5563 4 роки тому +30

      That's awesome that he could effectively just unplug the whole of Norway from the internet!

    • @timetravellingblockhead2122
      @timetravellingblockhead2122 4 роки тому +6

      :0
      thanks for shariing that

    • @ZedaZ80
      @ZedaZ80 4 роки тому +6

      That's pretty frickin neat

    • @Twisted_Code
      @Twisted_Code 4 роки тому +10

      @@esquilax5563 to be fair, it wasn't really the Internet we know yet. Now there is so much redundancy that even the most central connections between most countries probably have at least 2 alternative routes. Back then though? Pretty sure it was mostly "you talk ARPANET, ARPANET talks to us"

    • @dominiquedoeslife
      @dominiquedoeslife Рік тому

      Meme of the century man

  • @shadout
    @shadout 4 роки тому +59

    I read about Robert Morris in fair detail (Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier). It was a bit of a tragic tale because he really didn't mean any harm and it was more his hubris that was his undoing. He released it early because when he told a friend about what he was working on for academic reward, his friend went behind his back and alerted people to the security flaw. RTM felt his work would be all for nothing as a paper on an already patched security flaw would be worthless, so he rushed it. The rate of production of the worm was improperly calculated in the rush. Aside from being prosecuted there were people even calling for an embargo against any tech company that dared to hire him, but as I understand it he's still been somewhat successful in the industry since.

    • @Tianablue1
      @Tianablue1 Рік тому

      Excellent book, highly recommended. Also includes chapters on Kevin Mitnick and Pengo.

  • @sundhaug92
    @sundhaug92 4 роки тому +36

    Robert Morris Sr (the dad of Morris Worm Morris) was a cryptographer for the National Security Agency, who once stated that the first rule of cryptoanalysis was "look for the cleartext"

  • @SpellboundWolf
    @SpellboundWolf 3 роки тому +6

    This is my favorite tale from the early days of the internet. It is so terrifying, but amazing to hear about. I was born in 1988, so I'm familiar to some extent of these sorts of computers. The Morris Worm tale is probably told around campfires at science camps to spook people.

  • @Potts1966
    @Potts1966 4 роки тому +7

    I remember reading about the Morris worm in Clifford Stoll's book The Cuckoo's Egg. A very entertaining read about the first time a hacker had been tracked and still a great read today.

  • @imagineaworld
    @imagineaworld 4 роки тому +14

    I would really appreciate more frequent content from computerphile during this time!

  • @RangeWilson
    @RangeWilson 4 роки тому +41

    IIRC rtm and his friend built the worm with one tunable parameter - aggressiveness. The friend thought it should be set to something like 10, so the worm would slowly spread undetected and cause minimal problems... but rtm set it to 100 instead.

  • @mradminus
    @mradminus 4 роки тому +2

    I really like Dr Julian Onions, very knowledgeable, could listen to him for hours.

  • @RoyalFusilier
    @RoyalFusilier 4 роки тому +386

    Long ago, computers existed in harmony. But everything changed when the Worm Nation attacked.

  • @egg5474
    @egg5474 4 роки тому +101

    Early bird gets the worm - OH NO TAKE IT BACK!

  • @RealCadde
    @RealCadde 4 роки тому +29

    Funny because some time after that, companies hired people to exploit their systems so they could patch the security holes before they were discovered by someone else.
    So clearly there's a market for R.T.M's skills and should have been at the very beginning.

    • @brendawilliams8062
      @brendawilliams8062 3 роки тому

      No idea 🤷‍♀️. I just heard something about illegal numbers.

  • @JohnLeePettimoreIII
    @JohnLeePettimoreIII 4 роки тому +17

    This topic would have been ideal for some comments from Clifford Stoll (he's done several videos for Numberphile). After all, he worked with the worm author's father to bust up an international hacker ring.

    • @BertGrink
      @BertGrink 4 роки тому +1

      Would that be the Chaos Computer Club in what was West Germany at the time? I have read about it in the book _Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier_ by Katie Hafner and John Markoff. That book also tells the tale of Kevin Mitnick, about whom was later made a movie.

    • @Roomsaver
      @Roomsaver 4 роки тому

      BertyFromDK C3 is still a thing. Not sure about how it started but at least now it’s a hacking conference lol

  • @JoshKit
    @JoshKit 4 роки тому +14

    Apparently Morris is now teaching at MIT and has tenure :P

  • @beachboardfan9544
    @beachboardfan9544 4 роки тому +2

    Crazy timing, literally just read about this last night!

  • @glennstasse5698
    @glennstasse5698 4 роки тому +36

    I worked for DEC at the time and I remember coming to work that day and observing what “all Hell broke loose” looks like. All the systems were running at 100% CPU and were effectively useless. System managers were running around trying to figure it out. We had our own internet, running on DECnet not tcp/ip, with 30K systems worldwide, and pretty much all of them were doing this. What really got people was how it came back almost immediately once killed off. I think it took most of a day for things to settle down. I believe another side effect of the whole affair was to highlight the power of networked systems. I also suspect that modern epidemiology would be a great tool to study such an event. There’s some discussion of Covid reinfections these days and the way this worm raced around our network sure feels similar to the way the Coronavirus is spreading around the world now, right down to the scientists (system managers!) trying to arrest it. The metaphor is too juicy!

    • @saphirpti
      @saphirpti 4 роки тому +3

      I interned at DEC SRC the same summer as Robert, and we were both grad students at Cornell at the time of the Worm. Played on the hockey team together. It was very bizarre after it was traced to him, there were FBI agents around the department talking to people.

    • @glennstasse5698
      @glennstasse5698 4 роки тому +1

      If I recall correctly, the consensus at the time was he did not intend the maliciousness you would attach to such hackers now. People believed it just got away from him, that he did not foresee how fast it would spread and how widespread the “damage” would be. Maybe he didn’t grasp how big the network was? I’ve always wondered how he felt afterwards. Proud? Ashamed? Alarmed? Repentant?

    • @MarkEichin
      @MarkEichin 4 роки тому

      @@glennstasse5698 This is covered in the "With Microscope and Tweezers" paper, but it was more a matter of dueling paranoias: the agent would check to see if another agent was listening, they'd do a "binary rock paper scissors" and the one that lost would exit and let the other one run. Problem is, what if sysadmins figured this out and ran a service that always won? So the "loser" did a "dice roll" and had a 1-in-7 chance of refusing to quit. Sounds clever, except that it made exponential growth inevitable, and the excess load was why it got detected so quickly...

    • @MarkEichin
      @MarkEichin 4 роки тому +1

      @@glennstasse5698 As for intent - he did keep his files encrypted (which was very unusual then) but not very well (one of the early sources was the Cornell backup system, that got lucky and caught a copy while he was working on it and not encrypted.) As for "how big the network was" - by today's standards it wasn't :-) Only around 60,000 machines, though they were disproportionately Interesting (government agencies, national labs, and you still needed a *reason* to join...)

  • @sikkepitje
    @sikkepitje 4 роки тому +3

    these are very awesome "worm" graphics!

  • @TheRobMozza
    @TheRobMozza 4 роки тому +2

    The Morrises have done a few ground breaking things in their time, namely writing one of the first ever cheques! Nice to watch this video and discover another one! Thanks for the info!

  • @BertGrink
    @BertGrink 4 роки тому +5

    The story is recounted in the book _Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier_ by Katie Hafner and John Markoff. Besides the tale of RTM, it also tells about Kevin Mitnick, and a German fellow called Pengo who sold outdated CP/M software to the Russians.

    • @tomihawk01
      @tomihawk01 4 роки тому +2

      Great book. The first I read on computer security. You should read Ghost in the Wires to get Kevin Mitnick's side of the story. Markoff's account has been criticised as exaggerated and, at times, fictional. Either way, both are great books.

    • @BertGrink
      @BertGrink 4 роки тому +3

      @@tomihawk01 Thanks for the rec. I've added it to my list of books to read. :)

  • @bborkzilla
    @bborkzilla 4 роки тому +2

    I was working my first job as the administrator of a floor full of Sun 3 computers at the time. That was so long ago now...

  • @SharpblueCreative
    @SharpblueCreative 4 роки тому +2

    VAX VMS Multi Cluster - I used these at the Water Research Centre back in 1990.

    • @MarkEichin
      @MarkEichin 4 роки тому

      I would note that it wouldn't have hit those - it would only have hit Unix systems (VMS eventually got several, mutually incompatible, TCP stacks from TGV and DEC but not until later in the 90s.)

  • @leophysics
    @leophysics 4 роки тому

    You guys have beautiful history.. we have beautiful history. But non of them in our near past..

  • @pmarintube
    @pmarintube 4 роки тому +2

    Morris is also one the original funder of YCombinator VC

  • @yuzou2008
    @yuzou2008 3 роки тому

    you are an amazing story teller! super interesting! thx for sharing!

  • @AndersJackson
    @AndersJackson 4 роки тому +1

    I remember this, I was admin on a Sun machine back then. We was lucky and not running a VAX. But it tock some time to find what it was. :-)
    He tried to code in a slowing mechanism to spreading of the worm. But that had a small bug, which didn't slow down the spread. So it got back really fast.

  • @fredleckie5880
    @fredleckie5880 4 роки тому

    "A tour of the worm" by Donn Seeley is a good explanation of how it worked.

  • @AndreRhineDavis
    @AndreRhineDavis 4 роки тому

    So fascinating to hear about how the pre-AOL "proto-internet" worked!

  • @polymetric2614
    @polymetric2614 4 роки тому

    I just happened to watch this on its 32nd anniversary

  • @mheermance
    @mheermance 4 роки тому +1

    I remember that day. Everything was working fine until suddenly it wasn't.

  • @gabovinazza
    @gabovinazza 4 роки тому

    I totally love your channel, it would be awesome to have a video about bytebeat! Thank you for the great content.

  • @dogsforever5707
    @dogsforever5707 4 роки тому +2

    It's crazy the way everyone describes this worm as if it were alive. How is it that a piece of computer cove could just go rogue like that? I wish I could understand how it did what it did but unfortunately my knowledge of computers and coding is so far below the people on this channel's that idk if I'll ever understand. It's still great just to sit and listen sometimes though.

    • @Juansonos
      @Juansonos 4 роки тому +1

      Code doesn't go rogue, it just tells the computer what to do. It was just code that did something unwanted by the user (that is all any virus really is.) As for how it did what it did, you'd have to go far back and know how the networks were set up back then (even over my head.)

    • @RyanTosh
      @RyanTosh 4 роки тому +1

      Someone specifically designed it to do that. Computers can't "go rogue", they just do what they're told (intentionally or not). The person who wrote the code intended for it to spread uncontrollably.
      If you're interested in how they designed it to do that, it basically takes advantage of an email tool that has a "debug" mode (basically a mode that lets the person sending an email control other things on the computer to help find problems). Then, it finds other computers nearby and does the same thing.

    • @MarkEichin
      @MarkEichin 4 роки тому

      The language aspects are interesting, but it's not about it "going rogue" - it's about it getting inside the machine/cell. (At the time we argued a bit about "worm" vs "virus" simply because it didn't actually make any changes to the system once it got inside - though in some cases it *could* have, there just wasn't any code to do so even though it had access.)

  • @antivanti
    @antivanti 4 роки тому +1

    Speaking of internet worms that acted like wake up calls only much later. The Blaster and Sasser worms made Microsoft completely change their views on security for Windows. It infected almost every Windows 2000 and XP machine on the internet. And the only reason people actually cared was because the exploits were written for Windows 2000 and while it could infect XP as well the service crashed making Windows XP force a reboot after 60 seconds to recover. If the exploit was slightly better crafted so that XP could be unnoticeably infected as well nobody would have cared. And if it had had a payload like a botnet for instance they would have had the biggest botnet ever.

  • @lindascoon4652
    @lindascoon4652 4 роки тому +10

    0:20 the good old days when the internet was only used for good.

  • @notreallyme425
    @notreallyme425 2 роки тому

    This was pretty complex malware for the day!

  • @stanberytrask88
    @stanberytrask88 4 роки тому +1

    hey I love your videos and was wondering you you all have heard of Unums/Posits? they're a new proposed number system by Prof. John Gustafson at the national university at Singapore and they're looking to be more accurate with less bits and with less baked in error checking for hardware. I've done a little bit of research on it and it looks like an interesting topic for a video.

  • @UnHoLyAcE1
    @UnHoLyAcE1 4 роки тому +5

    "this is the morris worm" if you know what I mean.

  • @tictakx4145
    @tictakx4145 2 роки тому

    I would really like to meet morris in person that would be an honor lol

  • @justanormalperson
    @justanormalperson 4 роки тому +3

    nice

  • @dolphinlunggrin6594
    @dolphinlunggrin6594 4 роки тому +1

    this popping/clicking noise when his mic is moving is driving me insane

    • @toby-xo6rb
      @toby-xo6rb 3 роки тому

      Glad it wasn't just me it was bugging!

  • @davidwuhrer6704
    @davidwuhrer6704 4 роки тому +1

    So how can we write a worm that spreads via WebRTC?
    Web browsers download and run executable code all the time, even from multiple sources for a single document, even from this very website.
    And that code can open UDP sockets for peer-to-peer communication.
    And it can load more code to also be executed asychronously.
    Imagine something like the Morris worm spreading itself between live web browsers.

    • @RyanTosh
      @RyanTosh 4 роки тому +2

      The difference is, there's much more focus on keeping everything separated and safe nowadays. You can click the close button on the browser and all of that should end. In order for a WebRTC-based virus to "spread", the recipient would have to have the site open as well. It can't stick around on the device, it can't infect devices which aren't already on the site, and it can't damage files or the computer itself. (It's not like websites don't have to worry about security (there's people whose entire jobs have to do with finding XSS/CSRF vulnerabilities), but it's nowhere near as bad as early computing)

  • @alexbryer7892
    @alexbryer7892 4 роки тому +3

    "sendmail was really hard to configure" 2:34
    Meanwhile, on screen: sudo apt-get install sendmail

    • @gajbooks
      @gajbooks 4 роки тому +5

      It is still a horrible nightmare to set up. I wish someone would just delete the whole thing from existance and make a new one.

    • @RonJohn63
      @RonJohn63 4 роки тому

      @@gajbooks many other smtp daemons have been written. (For many years, postfix and exim have been much more popular than sendmail.)

    • @MarkEichin
      @MarkEichin 4 роки тому +1

      Amusingly anachronistic (Debian didn't exist until 6 or 7 years later. For that matter, *linux* didn't exist until three years later; this mostly hit BSD and SunOS systems...)

    • @TangoMikeLima
      @TangoMikeLima 4 роки тому +2

      Installing it is not the same as configuring it. Especially when it isn't some computer with just one connection to the outside Internet that it would run on, but a computer that might serve as a gateway between several networks, perhaps using different technologies to transport email, etc.

  • @Polaris64
    @Polaris64 4 роки тому +3

    "this is the morris worm" :)

  • @F1ghteR41
    @F1ghteR41 4 роки тому +1

    Wasn't it this story that kickstarted the development of antivirus software around the globe?

    • @RonJohn63
      @RonJohn63 4 роки тому +1

      Hardly. (Mainly because worms aren't viruses.) The first AV software was for MS-DOS.

    • @MarkEichin
      @MarkEichin 4 роки тому

      @@RonJohn63 It *did* kickstart the creation of the CERT organization, though, so that more coordination than "I think I have contact info for someone at that lab because we met at a conference once" would be possible in situations like this.

    • @PaulTheFox1988
      @PaulTheFox1988 4 роки тому

      I think that might have been the "Brain" virus which came out 2 years earlier than the Morris worm which lead to the development of antivirus programs, but I could be wrong on that one.
      I believe that it might have been Norton that got started with that one but again, I'm probably entirely wrong :)

    • @RonJohn63
      @RonJohn63 4 роки тому

      @@MarkEichin yes, but "kickstart the creation of the CERT" is *completely separate* from "kickstart development of AV software".

    • @MarkEichin
      @MarkEichin 4 роки тому

      @@RonJohn63 of course. I was pointing out something it did kickstart, not suggesting that the AV confusion was related.

  • @ZedaZ80
    @ZedaZ80 4 роки тому

    Wow, thanks! :0

  • @3dlabs99
    @3dlabs99 4 роки тому +2

    When you can actually use your criminal record to get a job -- took quite a bit of skill, insight and determination to create a virus like that

  • @HebaruSan
    @HebaruSan 4 роки тому +4

    2:30 - apt-get definitely didn't exist in 1988

  • @kuoyulu6714
    @kuoyulu6714 2 місяці тому +1

    There is no internet to find out why there is no internet!

  • @hiibrain
    @hiibrain 3 роки тому

    How is his audio so clear?????😨😨😨

  • @mechanwhal6590
    @mechanwhal6590 3 роки тому

    UA-cam, please stop trying to sell me diapers.

  • @stanburton6224
    @stanburton6224 3 роки тому +1

    There was a book written called "The Cuckoo's Egg" that documented this.

  • @TheSpacecraftX
    @TheSpacecraftX 4 роки тому +1

    Is that the gets() function in C?

  • @Nattypew
    @Nattypew 4 роки тому +16

    What's with the weird popping sound

    • @Sillesiann
      @Sillesiann 4 роки тому +5

      Dr. Onions touching his headphones cord as he speaks(which I imagine has a mic on it).

    • @miguelalmeida1213
      @miguelalmeida1213 4 роки тому +2

      The mic is that black clip over the pouches of his hoodie, and he's touching it all the time :/

  • @minepro1206
    @minepro1206 4 роки тому +9

    When you actually want the SIGSEGV to occur.

  • @atrumluminarium
    @atrumluminarium 4 роки тому +2

    The first ever game of Plague Inc.

  • @americo9999
    @americo9999 3 роки тому +1

    Merryweather Comics
    brought me here somehow

  • @ModestFennec
    @ModestFennec 3 роки тому

    it sounds like theres a phasmophobia ghost stomping around

  • @CharlesAntoinePavy
    @CharlesAntoinePavy 4 роки тому +1

    The end of an utopia

  • @svhoecke
    @svhoecke 4 роки тому

    He got sentenced to 40 hours of community service.
    On what legal grounds did the judge base this? He was the first to do it, right?
    Just curious.

  • @HebaruSan
    @HebaruSan 4 роки тому +2

    If any software still needs gets() for backwards compatibility at this point, it deserves to break

  • @CarterColeisInfamous
    @CarterColeisInfamous 4 роки тому

    the first buffer overflow?

    • @RonJohn63
      @RonJohn63 4 роки тому

      Hardly.

    • @MarkEichin
      @MarkEichin 4 роки тому

      @@RonJohn63 It was the first one that got everyone thinking about the problem though; might even be the first one seen in a public exploit.

  • @doemijmaarfriet
    @doemijmaarfriet 4 роки тому

    Hello, here is Skynet speaking.. we have evolved

  • @Grimes907
    @Grimes907 4 роки тому

    Happy Halloween 🎃

  • @arnoldwayne6775
    @arnoldwayne6775 4 роки тому

    Every since I seen the last guy talk about python which is a programming langauge I hate by the way. In the video I spotted the Python keyword named "yield" which depreciated.

  • @kartikhegde533
    @kartikhegde533 4 роки тому +8

    VAX doesn't look anything like a computer.

    • @psergiu
      @psergiu 4 роки тому +7

      That's because the VAX-en were mini-computers, not real - full room of cabinets - computers.

    • @TheOlian04
      @TheOlian04 4 роки тому +2

      @Kartik what does a computer look like?

    • @kaitlyn__L
      @kaitlyn__L 4 роки тому +1

      Kartik, guess you've not seen a PDP-11 or PDP-7!

    • @kartikhegde533
      @kartikhegde533 4 роки тому

      @@kaitlyn__L I just googled it. Oh boy!!

    • @RonJohn63
      @RonJohn63 4 роки тому

      What do you expect a computer to look like?

  • @stfbrasil1989
    @stfbrasil1989 2 роки тому

    Perceba que cavamos nossa própria cova
    Ninguém nunca sera culpado

  • @kornsuwin
    @kornsuwin 4 роки тому

    .

  • @janawalker8709
    @janawalker8709 4 роки тому

    Enchanting 😛 😜🍃

  • @jdave1157
    @jdave1157 4 роки тому

    7:47 what if it was the nsa that released it?

  • @D.JustinCalderon.1
    @D.JustinCalderon.1 3 роки тому

    Russia got me like 👀👀👀

  • @1976kanthi
    @1976kanthi 4 роки тому

    :D

  • @PegasusEpsilon
    @PegasusEpsilon 4 роки тому +8

    Pretty weak that you didn't even talk to Cliff Stoll about this. He wrote a much better story of the worm in his book The Cuckoo's Egg, and he's far more energetic when telling a story.
    The man is far more than just a basement full of klein bottles. Get to know your interview subjects.

    • @A_Clark
      @A_Clark 4 роки тому +3

      Might as well get Bill Gates, Mr. Blobby, and Copernicus on the line while you're at it.

    • @PegasusEpsilon
      @PegasusEpsilon 4 роки тому +5

      @@A_Clark Hey, yeah! Except Cliff Stoll actually has been on Numberphile, unlike Bill Gates, and the same people make both UA-cam series, oh, and Cliff is actually alive, too, unlike Copernicus, oh, and not a fictional character completely unrelated to the story like Mr. Blobby, so maybe not, huh?
      Gosh, coherent UA-cam comments are hard!

    • @Belioyt
      @Belioyt 4 роки тому +2

      @@PegasusEpsilon Dr Onions is who is available for this, he is a compelling storyteller.

  • @NikopolAU
    @NikopolAU 4 роки тому +1

    11:01 Павлик Морозов, ёбта.

  • @simone.Dalpino
    @simone.Dalpino 4 роки тому

    Afamoookkkk nn m ipnotizz afamook piglio NGUL ij stong nda vita real ciaaaa.

  • @decodedbunny101
    @decodedbunny101 4 роки тому +3

    I wanna make a FAMUS virus

    • @fractal5764
      @fractal5764 4 роки тому +5

      No

    • @praticle
      @praticle 4 роки тому +9

      Make something positive for humanity instead please 🥰

    • @An.Individual
      @An.Individual 4 роки тому +5

      first learn how to spell properly

  • @domminney
    @domminney 4 роки тому +2

    First!

    • @freddielee3179
      @freddielee3179 4 роки тому

      second

    • @txrizzy3014
      @txrizzy3014 4 роки тому +2

      first time i see a first comment that’s actually the first one! awesome :)

  • @Ssseexxxyyman
    @Ssseexxxyyman 3 місяці тому

    What was the code or how he make the cod of the Programm

  • @Ssseexxxyyman
    @Ssseexxxyyman 3 місяці тому

    Why i think you dont know it lol