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I was a student part-time administrator/systems programmer at the Purdue Engineering Computer Network at the time. Our OS installs had enough local mods (and we had enough non-VAX, non-Sun architectures) that we were immune to some of the worm's modalities, but the sendmail debug mode exploit at least still caused a lot of consternation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, it's hard to see this as some sort of "hacker respect hacker" in light of MIT's other actions. It's very hard to extract Robert Tappan Morris from the context of his father being an extremely powerful man when trying to figure out how he managed to get away with what he did.
At the same time, it's easy to believe that MIT of 2013 is very different than MIT of 1988.
I was a student part-time administrator/systems programmer at the Purdue Engineering Computer Network at the time. Our OS installs had enough local mods (and we had enough non-VAX, non-Sun architectures) that we were immune to some of the worm's modalities, but the sendmail debug mode exploit at least still caused a lot of consternation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiosity, why do you think this?
There's contemporaneous reporting. It's in Katie Hafner and John Markoff's book! A friend of Morris', named Paul, has a role in the aftermath of the worm. I'm not dunking on Paul Graham here. If you know anything about me, if anything, this is a point in his favor. :)
Thanks for the answer, I'll check out the book.
From the Wikipedia article: Clifford Stoll, author of The Cuckoo's Egg, wrote that "Rumors have it that [Morris] worked with a friend or two at Harvard's computing department (Harvard student Paul Graham sent him mail asking for 'Any news on the brilliant project')". Has pg commented on this?
Would you?
I was a student part-time administrator/systems programmer at the Purdue Engineering Computer Network at the time. Our OS installs had enough local mods (and we had enough non-VAX, non-Sun architectures) that we were immune to some of the worm's modalities, but the sendmail debug mode exploit at least still caused a lot of consternation.
Diversity is security! I wish more people understood that. It may be more difficult to manage a bunch of diverse systems, but they are much more resilient to attacks.
From the Wikipedia article: Clifford Stoll, author of The Cuckoo's Egg, wrote that "Rumors have it that [Morris] worked with a friend or two at Harvard's computing department (Harvard student Paul Graham sent him mail asking for 'Any news on the brilliant project')". Has pg commented on this?
Would you?