Robert Morris Releases Runaway Worm

In November 1988, the Morris worm became one of the first computer worms to spread across the internet, infecting around 10% of connected machines. Its creator, graduate student Robert Tappan Morris, intended it to replicate slowly for research, but a coding error set a variable too high, causing it to copy itself uncontrollably. The runaway replication overloaded systems nationwide, leading to damages estimated at $100,000-10 million, and Morris later became the first person convicted under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

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