"There may be a virus loose on the internet."

- Andy Sudduth of Harvard, 34 minutes after midnight, Nov. 3, 1988; The What, Why, and How of the 1988 Internet Worm

A Summary of the Robert Morris Case

• The Robert Morris internet worm Brendan P. Kehoe, Zen and the Art of the Internet
• The what, why, and how of the 1988 internet worm Tom Darby
• Robert T. Morris and his worm Eugene Spafford
• A report on the internet worm Bob Page, University of Lowell

Analyses of the Attack

• Gene Spafford's FTP site for more documents
• United States v. Robert Morris Case Ralph C. Losey, Attorney at Law

Chronological Reports on the Worm and the aftermath

• Robert T. Morris suspended from Cornell The Risks Digest
• Robert T. Morris convicted The Risks Digest
• Posting from the Risks Digest

Background Information

• Unix "Man" (manual) pages regarding the three Unix commands used in the worm's attack. From Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX man pages
• Fingerd - status report of users currently logged in on the system
• Sendmail - send mail over the internet
• Rsh - restricted version of a command programming language that executes commands read from a terminal or a file"
• RFC 1135: Helminthiasis of the Internet J. Reynolds