Monday, November 5, 2012
Cybersecurity breach stories
One true story that shows what mainstream generative technology leads to in terms of online security breaches is the story
of the Internet's first worm.In 1988, 60000 computers were connected to the Internet, but not all of
them were PCs. Most were mainframes, minicomputers and professional
workstations. On November 2, 1988, the computers acted strangely. They started
to slow down, because they were running a malicious code that demanded
processor time and that spread itself to other computers. The purpose of such
software was to transmit a copy to the machines and run in parallel with
existing software and repeat all over again. It exploited a flaw in a common
e-mail transmission program running on a computer by rewriting it to facilitate
its entrance or it guessed users' password, because, at that time, passwords
were simple (e.g. username 'harry' with a password '...harry') or were
obviously related to a list of 432 common passwords tested at each computer.The
software was traced back to 23 year old Cornell University graduate
student Robert Tappan Morris, Jr.. When questioned about the motive for
his actions, Morris said 'he wanted to count how many machines were connected
to the Internet. His explanation was verified with his code, but it turned
out to be buggy, nevertheless.
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