Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!jik
From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Possible Fines for Virus Perpetrator
Keywords: Morris, virus, internet
Message-ID: <8084@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 20 Nov 88 09:46:28 GMT
References: <456@l5comp.UUCP> <440@occrsh.ATT.COM> <312@pte.UUCP> <362@marob.MASA.COM> <3728@peora.ccur.com>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
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Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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In article <3728@peora.ccur.com> joel@peora.UUCP writes:
>One point I think that hasn't been made is that from all the material
>I've seen so far it wasn't Morris' intent to bring the Internet to
>it's knees, it was an bug in his program that caused it.  The program
>appears to have been designed to QUIETLY penetrate each system and
>report the information back to Morris.  We really don't know what
>Morris intended to do with this information.

Yes we do.  The program does not "appear to have been designed to ...
penerate each system and report the information back to Morris."  The
only information reported by Morris was one byte of *uninitialized*
(i.e. random) sent to a port at Berkeley to which he didn't even have
access.  Yes, it was designed to penetrate quietly and survive.  But
no, it was not designed to send any useful information back to Morris,
such as passwords he could use to break into other systems.  At the
very most, he used the data byte sent to Berkeley to monitor the
spread of the virus.

Morris *did not* intend to gain any special privileges on any machines
on the net.  Even if he doesn't say that out loud himself, his code
does.  And I've seen the code.

  Jonathan Kamens
  MIT '91