Robert Tappan Morris

Robert Tappan Morris
Robert Tappan Morris
Born	November 8, 1965 (age 61)
Occupation(s)	Computer scientist, entrepreneur
Known for	Developing the Morris worm; co-founding Viaweb and Y Combinator; MIT faculty member

Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur, primarily recognized for developing the Morris worm in 1988, which is widely regarded as the first computer worm to spread across the Internet.

Morris became the inaugural individual convicted under the then-newly enacted Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) due to his release of the worm. Subsequently, he co-established the online retail platform Viaweb, one of the pioneering web applications, along with the venture capital firm Y Combinator, both ventures created with partners Paul Graham and Trevor Blackwell.

He later joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he achieved tenure in 2006. In 2019, Morris was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.

Early life

Born in 1965, Morris is the son of Robert Morris, a computer scientist affiliated with Bell Labs who contributed to the design of Multics and Unix, and later served as chief scientist at the NSA's National Computer Security Center. Raised in Millington, New Jersey, he attended The Peck School before graduating from Delbarton School in 1983.

He began his studies at Harvard University and later entered graduate school at Cornell University. During his initial year there, he created a computer worm that caused widespread disruption across early internet systems, resulting in his indictment. After fulfilling his sentence, Morris returned to Harvard to complete his doctorate under advisor H. T. Kung, earning his Ph.D. in 1999.

Morris worm

While enrolled at Cornell in 1988, Morris developed and launched the Morris worm from MIT. This worm exploited multiple vulnerabilities including:

A flaw in debug mode within the Unix sendmail program
A buffer overflow vulnerability in the fingerd network service
Trust relationships enabling passwordless remote logins via rexec/rsh

Although designed to check for existing infections before replicating itself, the worm still propagated approximately 14% of the time regardless of responses to avoid missing any targets. This behavior resulted in significant system overloads and considerable service interruptions.

The financial consequences were notable, with remediation expenses per affected system estimated between $200 and $53,000, culminating in total damages approaching $10 million.

Criminal prosecution

In 1989, Morris faced indictment under Title 18 of the United States Code (), specifically under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), marking him as the first person charged under this legislation. By December 1990, he was sentenced to three years probation, mandated to complete 400 hours of community service, and fined $10,050 plus supervision fees. His conviction was upheld upon appeal in March 1991. Morris explained his intent was "to demonstrate the inadequacies of current security measures on computer networks by exploiting the security defects [he] had discovered." He completed all sentencing requirements by 1994.

Later life and work

Morris’s work has concentrated on network architecture innovations such as distributed hash tables exemplified by Chord, along with wireless mesh networks like Roofnet.

A longtime associate and friend of Paul Graham, Morris co-founded two companies alongside him. Graham dedicated his book ANSI Common Lisp to Morris and named a programming language used for generating web pages for online stores as RTML (Robert T. Morris Language) in his honor. Graham has described Morris as one of his personal heroes, emphasizing that Morris is "never wrong."

Timeline

1983 – Completed studies at Delbarton School located in Morristown, New Jersey
1987 – Obtained Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University
1988 – As a graduate student at Cornell University, launched the Morris worm
1989 – Became the first individual prosecuted under the CFAA following indictment
1990 – Found guilty in the case of United States v. Morris
1995 – Alongside Paul Graham, established Viaweb, a startup focused on software for creating online retail platforms
1998 – Sold Viaweb to Yahoo for $49 million; subsequently rebranded as Yahoo! Store
1999 – Awarded Ph.D. in Applied Sciences from Harvard University with dissertation titled Scalable TCP Congestion Control
1999 – Joined MIT faculty as an assistant professor
2005 – Helped launch Y Combinator, a seed-stage venture capital firm offering funding, mentorship, and networking opportunities, co-founded with Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, and Jessica Livingston
2006 – Granted tenure at MIT; took on role of technical advisor at Cisco Meraki
2008 – Collaborated with Paul Graham to introduce Arc, a dialect of Lisp
2010 – Honored with the SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award
2015 – Became an elected Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in recognition of significant contributions to networking, distributed systems, and operating systems
2019 – Inducted into the National Academy of Engineering

External links

, affiliated with MIT