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A comment on This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Internet within 24 hours.

Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by rs186 on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @11:58AM (#45813189)
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.

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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by tonyplee on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @12:30PM (#45813587)
Would be cool if he adds a session on how to hack distributed system in 1988...
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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by tptacek on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @12:32PM (#45813608)
In 1988? Just stick random semicolons in things.
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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by mindcrime on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @03:22PM (#45815468)
> Would be cool if he adds a session on how to hack distributed system in 1988..

username: field

password: technician

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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by oneshtein on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @05:56PM (#45816842)
Account "guest" with no password was provided by default back then, to help others do some work remotely, debug connection issues, or chat with admins.
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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by PeterStuer on Wednesday November 05, 2025 @03:27AM (#45820711)
Honestly, there was not very much security back in those days. So much relied on trusting the Internet "community" not to abuse.
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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by pyyxbkshed on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @12:49PM (#45813789)
I am also doing the course now in my freetime. Even I wasn't aware who he is.

On a sidenote, what did you do after the course?

It is an amazing course though!

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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by maxmcd on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @04:22PM (#45816037)
I went here next: https://www.youtube.com/@CMUDatabaseGroup
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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by rs186 on Saturday November 08, 2025 @07:53AM (#45856342)
Sadly, not much. My shitty job working on legacy systems doesn't really allow me to use it professionally. Still, I got a much better perspective on concurrency and systems in general, and when I occasionally see articles/videos about system design questions I could understand what they are talking about, which probably will be handy when the day arrives.

I have a colleague who suggested that I could look at open source projects on distributed systems and get my hands wet, although I haven't had a chance to do that due to time constraints. Maybe something you could consider.

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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by Dave_Rosenthal on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @05:40PM (#45816709)
RTM was my TA at MIT for a CS/systems engineering course. It took the students until we did an assignment about the worm to realize who he was IIRC. The students thought it was very cool, but even then, as a TA covering the assignment, he didn't really talk about it.
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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by arbuge on Wednesday November 05, 2025 @08:53AM (#45822826)
He was also a TA at Harvard with Trevor Blackwell for CS 148 (computer networking, taught by H T Kung) at the time. I remember taking that with them in 1995.
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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by ww520 on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @08:33PM (#45818013)
His dad was a legend as well, chief scientist in NSA.
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Re:This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Int... by moc_saves on Wednesday November 05, 2025 @07:24AM (#45822094)
Which is why he was able to survive taking the fall alone, and let Paul Graham go on to have an illustrious career of picking fights with obscure bloggers and saying dumb things about women in tech.
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