From the Wikipedia article:

Clifford Stoll, author of The Cuckoo's Egg, wrote that "Rumors have it that [Morris] worked with a friend or two at Harvard's computing department (Harvard student Paul Graham sent him mail asking for 'Any news on the brilliant project')".

Has pg commented on this?

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tim333 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

PG spoke about the worm a bit in an interview here: https://aletteraday.substack.com/p/letter-85-paul-graham-and...

Some quotes from that:

> The worm, no one would have ever known that the worm existed, except there was a bug in it. That was the problem. The worm itself was absolutely harmless. But there was a bug in the code that controlled the number of copies that would spread to a given computer. And so the computer would get like 100 copies of the worm running on it, back in the day, when having 100 processes running on your computer would be enough to crash it.

>he called me and told me what had happened.

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iwontberude 2 days ago | parent [-]

I suppose the notion that you could just distribute untested software onto an unlimited amount of other peoples computers without consent wasn't yet considered unethical so therefore the worm was perceived to be absolutely harmless by rtm and pg. Just some minor details they couldn't possibly have seen back then.

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georgemcbay 2 days ago | parent [-]

> I suppose the notion that you could just distribute untested software onto an unlimited amount of other peoples computers without consent wasn't yet considered unethical

As someone who is old enough to have been a teenage hacker back in this timeframe and who spent his time on old Diversi Dial dialup systems which lead to early internet systems via gnu/fsf's open access policy, which lead to bitnet relay, and who was around during the initial development of irc right around this very year (1988) I can say that it was absolutely considered a bad act to do this sort of thing back then even as just a prank or demonstration (which made it kind of cool to back-then me, as a teenager, but which made it certainly unethical in a professional sense even for the time).

... however when you oopsied and the shit hit the fan, you could get away with it if your dad worked for the NSA.

The vast majority of people who weren't RTM would have had a far more severely negative outcome in his situation.

	▲	tptacek a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		He was treated comparably to other people prosecuted for computer felonies post-CFAA. Non-remunerative crime, first-time offense, super unclear intent, damaged a research network. Felony conviction. What more do you want? The next wave of people who were sentenced, to like 1 year, were owning up phone switches.
	▲	typs a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I mean, he did get convicted of a felony.

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tomhow 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He's referred to it a few times in essays:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+%22mor...

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tptacek 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would you?

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Zak 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

If the statute of limitations was long passed and I had fuck you money, why not?

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tptacek 2 days ago | parent [-]

I think part of this might be that as fun as this all is to talk about, it wasn't super fun for Robert Tappan Morris. My friends from back in the day are not OK with me talking about what they did, even though nothing happened to any of them.

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mindcrime 2 days ago | parent [-]

For the sake of argument, let's assume that rtm finds the whole episode embarrassing or whatever and would prefer to avoid the topic. If pg is really his close friend, it makes sense that pg would defer from conversing about it (especially in public) simply out of respect for his friend.

	▲	tptacek 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Also of all the places he could ever talk about it --- HERE?

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giancarlostoro 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I hope he at least leaves it in his will or something. We're all wondering / waiting to know.

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conartist6 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

top comment of the year

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zelda420 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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quickthrowman 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A bit of an aside from The Cuckoo’s Egg;

It’s been a long time since I read the book, but IIRC Cliff visited with Robert Morris (rtm’s dad) at the NSA when he traveled to Washington DC, and I think the worm and rtm are mentioned after he meets with the elder Robert.