The article mentions the Morris worm (NB: the quote from pg):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm
Edit: More context:
A memory of Bob Morris
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#12Am I the only one who finds that action malicious and unflattering? It's one thing to try to hack into systems that you have no access to, and an entirely different thing to replace /bin/login to harvest passwords on a machine you have root access on. I really don't see this as touching, warm or fuzzy at all. It has nothing to do with hacking, it's just a way of getting everyone's passwords.
No, you're not the only one. That doesn't seem much like youthful mischief to me; in 1980 RHM would have been 48 (with a teenaged son RTM)! That's if the story is true -- and we have no evidence to suggest it is. P.S. Also I don't know what the author is talking about with regards to the encrypted files. Modern crypt(3) is clearly not something you use for reversible file encryption. P.P.S. Ok, Wikipedia says there w…
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Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#13Am I the only one who finds that action malicious and unflattering? It's one thing to try to hack into systems that you have no access to, and an entirely different thing to replace /bin/login to harvest passwords on a machine you have root access on. I really don't see this as touching, warm or fuzzy at all. It has nothing to do with hacking, it's just a way of getting everyone's passwords.
It was a different age, with different social norms. Hacking didn't have anything close to the stigma that it rightfully has now, and most incidents weren't malicious. If you had an account broken into back then there wasn't the same sense of invasion of privacy, most things were work related and run of the mill.
Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#14Am I the only one who finds that action malicious and unflattering? It's one thing to try to hack into systems that you have no access to, and an entirely different thing to replace /bin/login to harvest passwords on a machine you have root access on. I really don't see this as touching, warm or fuzzy at all. It has nothing to do with hacking, it's just a way of getting everyone's passwords.
It was a different age, with different social norms. Hacking didn't have anything close to the stigma that it rightfully has now, and most incidents weren't malicious. If you had an account broken into back then there wasn't the same sense of invasion of privacy, most things were work related and run of the mill.
I'm not saying he was going to steal people's credit card numbers or whatever (you'd need to call the president of the bank to make a credit card transaction at the time, anyway), what I'm saying is that, on the scale of hacking (actual hacking for excitement), replacing /bin/login with a trojan is pretty low, because there's no skill required to do it.
I wouldn't even call it hacking, really. It's like installing a keylogger, it's not a hack.
Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#15Am I the only one who finds that action malicious and unflattering? It's one thing to try to hack into systems that you have no access to, and an entirely different thing to replace /bin/login to harvest passwords on a machine you have root access on. I really don't see this as touching, warm or fuzzy at all. It has nothing to do with hacking, it's just a way of getting everyone's passwords.
No, you're not the only one. That doesn't seem much like youthful mischief to me; in 1980 RHM would have been 48 (with a teenaged son RTM)! That's if the story is true -- and we have no evidence to suggest it is. P.S. Also I don't know what the author is talking about with regards to the encrypted files. Modern crypt(3) is clearly not something you use for reversible file encryption. P.P.S. Ok, Wikipedia says there w…
Back then, you owned the whole computer network. You could rebuild the kernel, change drivers, whatever.
We would write fake login pages just to burn somebody - wait for their login attempt, print lots of fake security log messages, simulate a crash screen - just for fun.
Imagine putting a potato in your buddies exhaust pipe, or wiring up their car radio volume knob backward. Since there was no internet, there was no intent to 'rule the world' - just mess with your friends.
So no, it was no more malicious than a pre-med student putting a nervous system in their prof's mailbox.
Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a different age, with different social norms. Hacking didn't have anything close to the stigma that it rightfully has now, and most incidents weren't malicious. If you had an account broken into back then there wasn't the same sense of invasion of privacy, most things were work related and run of the mill.
I'm not saying he was going to steal people's credit card numbers or whatever (you'd need to call the president of the bank to make a credit card transaction at the time, anyway), what I'm saying is that, on the scale of hacking (actual hacking for excitement), replacing /bin/login with a trojan is pretty low, because there's no skill required to do it. I wouldn't even call it hacking, really. It's like installing a…
I'm not lying, at the time a trojan /bin/login was state of the art. Run of the mill hacking was calling up a strange system and using the login: guest to get access, or trying women's names as passwords over and over until you got lucky.
Actually knowing how to modify a C program was something of a skill, though your peers wouldn't be too impressed. Think more along the lines of office prank to misuse of company resources.
Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not saying he was going to steal people's credit card numbers or whatever (you'd need to call the president of the bank to make a credit card transaction at the time, anyway), what I'm saying is that, on the scale of hacking (actual hacking for excitement), replacing /bin/login with a trojan is pretty low, because there's no skill required to do it. I wouldn't even call it hacking, really. It's like installing a…
I'm not lying, at the time a trojan /bin/login was state of the art. Run of the mill hacking was calling up a strange system and using the login: guest to get access, or trying women's names as passwords over and over until you got lucky. Actually knowing how to modify a C program was something of a skill, though your peers wouldn't be too impressed. Think more along the lines of office prank to misuse of company res…
Oh. Hmm, that makes sense, I guess it would be considered something one might try for fun...
Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#18Brilliant piece. Thanks for sharing.
Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#19The article mentions the Morris worm (NB: the quote from pg): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm Edit: More context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris
I was a young grad student when the worm came out. The funny part is: Keith Bostic & company (at UCB) released a "patch" for the worm to fix what was broken (so it wouldn't infect the same machine twice).
One of my professors was writing a book, and after the worm hit, he became paranoid and restored copy of the LaTeX source of his book from the last backup, presumably to see if the worm had somehow messed with his book (the answer was, no, of course). It was funny to see how freaked out some people were.
Re: A memory of Bob Morris
#20Am I the only one who finds that action malicious and unflattering? It's one thing to try to hack into systems that you have no access to, and an entirely different thing to replace /bin/login to harvest passwords on a machine you have root access on. I really don't see this as touching, warm or fuzzy at all. It has nothing to do with hacking, it's just a way of getting everyone's passwords.
Things were different then.
I remember, a few years after the worm, Sun had just come out with shadow passwords; but our system hadn't implemented them yet. So I decided to run a dictionary attack the passwords stored in /etc/passwd. I wanted to show our sysadmins that going shadow was better, by telling them how many passwords could be broken. Obviously, I ran this password cracker on the same machine, and didn't bother to hide the fact.
The next day I get an email from our sysadmin, "why are you cracking passwords?".
"To show you how many of them are weak and can be cracked", I replied.
"Please don't do that" he replied, and I stopped.
In those days, harmless curiosity (as long as it wasn't malicious) was encouraged. People weren't as touchy as they are today.