Talk:Morris worm

message: A user has said a citation is needed for the fact the worm came from MIT, but infact the court notes in reference [2] address this issue. Not sure how to change myself, perhaps someone else could do it  =]
46.152.167.56 (talk) 16:55, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation needed error

message: For a detailed chronology, see http://www.worm.net/worm-chronology.html
That link is dead, whatever it was.  But the chronology of this page was in error: it began with reference in boldface to the “Morris Worm of November 9, 1988” despite stating later in the same paragraph that the Worm was launched on November 2, 1988.  I assumed it was a typographical error and corrected it accordingly, but if the chronology on the page was dependent upon information from the worm.net address given there, that domain name is currently for sale—-and all the referenced documentation indicates that Robert Tappan Morris launched the worm on November 2, 1988 and celebrated his 23rd birthday on November 8, 1988, and the date of November 9 is not significant in any of the journalistic or academic sources cited.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.198.12.140 (talk) 18:02, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Chronology

message: The fourth reference on this page is linking to http://www.bs2.com/cvirus.htm. Apparently, bs2's web registration expired because that's currently a spam page.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.5.215.218 (talk) 16:26, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Broken reference

message: 6,000 computers (the number affected by the Great Worm) in 1988 is the equivilant of how many computers today?*Kat* 00:25, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
* According to Google, there were around 60,000 hosts on the Internet in 1988, and most articles seem to agree that 5-10% of the Internet were affected, although Richard A. Spinello (in e.g., Cyberethics, ) claims the number of infected hosts were 2,500. Stacey L. Edgar (in Morality and Machines, ) gives 2,500 to 3,000 hosts, but Edgar may have Spinello as reference. As for the impact, it is claimed that for instance Code Red spread faster than the Morris Worm. Zigkill 12:43, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: Robert worked at Bell Labs before he wrote the worm, as a summer intern (his father was a long-time member of the computer research group).  I had recently written (in 1984) one of the first fast DES programs, using table look-up for S-box and P-box computation, and Robert and I easily adapted this code to perform a fast unix "crypt" function, the UNIX password one-way hash function.  In retrospect, am fairly certain that he used our code in the worm program, without my knowledge of course. DonPMitchell (talk) 05:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  crypt3.c 

message: See for yourself, Robert Tappan Morris
I can't be arsed to integrate the two, but really the info on that article should really be here. 24.68.225.103 (talk) 03:39, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Robert Tappan Morris article contains more details about the worm than this article 

message: Bitbut (talk) 11:54, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Factually, it's one of the first. Here's a newspaper reference from 6 months earlier: http://albarchive.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=5484963 and http://alb.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=5489425. Though this article calls the albany worm a 'virus' (complete with scare quotes, that's how early this was,) I happen to have firsthand knowledge ;-) that it was, in fact, a worm. SteubenGlass (talk) 01:19, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Belay that. In 1988 a lot of people used 'worm' to mean a virus without a payload... nobody had really conceived of a standalone app that propagated itself without a host, far as I know. Nowadays everyone seems settled on the modern definition of a 'worm' as a standalone app, with or without a payload. The second article link above contains a quote that clearly shows the April 1988 one to be a virus. And 20 years of resenting Robert Tappan Morris getting all sorts of wealth and fame simply by fucking up worse draws silently to a close. SteubenGlass (talk) 03:16, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  The definition of terms like worm and virus have changed over time. In 1988, virus was commonly used to refer to malware transmitted in executable files, often by social engineering (eg the Christmas Tree virus of 1987), and a worm was malware that actively attacked other targets over a network, like the WANK worm of 1989. The distinction was really created with this attack to distinguish it from the existing 8-bit virus ecosystem, borrowing terminology from Brunner's 1974 novel "Shockwave Rider". -- Resuna (talk) 17:55, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Is it 'the first' or 'one of the first'?

message: The section on "Architecture of the worm" contains too much jargon and is not immediately approachable.  This language should be simplified for clarity.
Baygross (talk) 16:17, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Architecture Section confusing + jargon 

message: The external link that purports to point to the "original commented" source code of the worm actually points to Prof. Eugene Spafford's decompilation of the worm. To the best of my knowledge, the original source is not available anywhere is has probably been lost.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.100.10.184 (talk) 21:54, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not likely to have been lost as it is evidence in a (literal) federal case. Also it's on the floppy disk in the picture.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quipchip (talk • contribs) 01:51, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source code 

message: Does anybody know what language the worm was written in? Devinthepeng (talk) 23:37, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language? 

message: Was the Morris Worm the inspiration for the computer virus in Halt & Catch Fire? GuyPaddock (talk) 19:20, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pop Culture References 

message: As far as I can tell, there is no source for the claim that the worm was created to gauge the size of the internet. It seems to have been introduced with this edit back in 2005, with no source attached.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.44.212.77 (talk) 02:34, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gauging the size of the internet? 

message: Can we please stop adding the webcomic "Internet Explorer" to the list of pop culture references for now ? As of October 17th, the character has yet to be fully introduced and I think it shouldn't be a reference until it is.
From the Wikipedia essay for "In popular culture" content : "Inclusion of unremarkable mentions or appearances – If an actor had a two-second cameo in a TV commercial, it is unlikely that anyone except that actor cares."
If you keep trying to add it now, what are you going to say ? "In this particular webcomic, there is a character named after the Morris Worm." is the only thing you can say for sure, and it's more like an unremarkable mention than a reference. You don't know what the character even looks like, for crying out loud.
I'm going to remove the reference for now. When the character is fully introduced, feel free to revert my changes and add the reference again.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.165.156.70 (talk) 16:55, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Internet Explorer" webtoon pop culture reference 

message: Testimony from Don Hopkins on Hacker News about mitigation of the sendmail DEBUG attack:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250313  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Olivier Mengué (talk • contribs) 11:25, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Testimony about sendmail DEBUG mitigation