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This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

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Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#91
post #75
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :)

Def know lots about you and def didn't think you were dunking on Paul, hence my curiosity, because it was specifically you Mr. Ptacek. :) Thanks for the answer, I'll check out the book.

Thanks for the answer, I'll check out the book.

It's a great read, but to echo what I said above: there have been a lot of questions over the years about the veracity of some of the details of their book. Take that for what it's worth. I enjoyed it enough that I've read it 3 or 4 times, but I do also suggest consulting other books on the same stories - particularly the stuff around K. Mitnick.

Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#92
post #69
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6,000+, and those machines served many others (back then there were tens of thousands of machines on the Internet, but probably 10x as many that were connected to these by relays that handled email or Usenet traffic).

Also worth remember that especially with Internet-connected computers almost everything was multiuser. You did work on the Internet from a shell on a shared Unix server, not from a laptop.

Serverless remote workspaces as you might call them now.

Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#93
post #21

I assume you all know that Robert Morris is one of the YC (and Viaweb) cofounders? [1] Together with Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, and Trevor Blackwell. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris

He also is (or was) an HN user. No comments in quite some time though. I wish he did post here more.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rtm

Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#94
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's proven out, like, at all; measure it against the returns on hardening mainstream platforms. The "monoculture" security thing has always been overblown, not least because you're never going to get an ecology where you have enough diversity to matter. Having 3 mainstream desktop or phone options is only marginally better than having just 1, and you're never going to have 20.

Do you do anything besides post on HN ;) Put everything in MicroSoft Active Directory. Wait until it gets hacked. You will lose DNS, DHCP, Email, file servers, web servers, endpoints, etc. Obviously, running a mono-culture is a dumb thing to do if you want to keep your business running. Maybe instead, run BIND on Linux servers, Apache on OpenBSD servers, have some Chromebooks, some Macs, etc. so everything doesn't go…

It sounds like common sense, but halfhearted diversification --- which is all that's available to mainstream users and enterprises --- can easily reduce security. That's because almost all real world security is logically perimeterized, with a single outward-facing attack surface that's given attention and an implicit premise that post-compromise persistence and pivoting is a given. Nobody survives an internal pentest, not even in 2025.

So by running BIND on Linux and Apache on OpenBSD and trying to tie it all into MSAD, what you're really doing is just expanding your attack surface, and once any of those are broken, attackers won't have to care about the state of the art in vulnerabilities to extend access from there.

The "monoculture" stuff is a product of a time when security pundits worried Microsoft was running the table on corporate IT. We're (generally) SAAS startup people here and very few of us run any Microsoft stuff. Almost all of us are better off extensively hardening a single Linux server environment than we are in deliberately trying to sprinkle NetBSD and Microsoft servers. That's doesn't improve security; it just turns your network into a CTF challenge.

Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#95

The term "worm" came from the 1975 (sci-fi) novel The Shockwave Rider : * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider

The worm in shockwave rider released secret information to the public. Turns out a worm was not needed for this, just wikileaks.

Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#96
post #80
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you?

If the statute of limitations was long passed and I had fuck you money, why not?

I think part of this might be that as fun as this all is to talk about, it wasn't super fun for Robert Tappan Morris. My friends from back in the day are not OK with me talking about what they did, even though nothing happened to any of them.

Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#97
post #29

I followed his course 6.5840 on distributed systems ( https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/ , YouTube videos at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrw6a1wE39_tb2fErI4-WkMbs... ) and completed the labs. One day, out of curiosity, I looked up his name. Then I realized what a legend he is. Great course by the way.

Would be cool if he adds a session on how to hack distributed system in 1988...

> Would be cool if he adds a session on how to hack distributed system in 1988..

username: field

password: technician

Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#98
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :)

It's in Katie Hafner and John Markoff's book! Not sure if that was supposed to be sarcasm[1] or was intended seriously, but for what it's worth Hafner & Markoff have frequently received a lot of criticism for playing fast and loose with the truth in that book. Now most of that is specifically in regards to their treatment of Mitnick, and I'm not making any particular accusation here. Just sharing a thought that "it's…

I mean, sure, it's not my favorite book either, but what's your theory here, that they just made up a Paul?

Re: This week in 1988, Robert Morris unleashed his eponymous worm

#100
post #96
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the statute of limitations was long passed and I had fuck you money, why not?

I think part of this might be that as fun as this all is to talk about, it wasn't super fun for Robert Tappan Morris. My friends from back in the day are not OK with me talking about what they did, even though nothing happened to any of them.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that rtm finds the whole episode embarrassing or whatever and would prefer to avoid the topic. If pg is really his close friend, it makes sense that pg would defer from conversing about it (especially in public) simply out of respect for his friend.
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