Robert Tappan Morris
Robert Tappan Morris ranked 5th in the list of famous hackers. He (born November 8, 1965) is a computer scientist and entrepreneur from the United States. In 1988, he created the Morris worm, which is regarded as the first computer worm on the Internet. Morris was charged with distributing the worm and was the first person to be convicted under the new Computer Fraud and Abuse Act at the time (CFAA). With Paul Graham, he later cofounded the online store Viaweb, one of the first web apps, and the venture capital investing firm Y Combinator. He later joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where he achieved tenure in 2006. In 2019, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. (en)
What Did He Do?
In 1988, he created the Morris Worm while he was a student at Cornell University. The program was intended to gauge the size of the internet, but it had a flaw: computers could be infected multiple times, and each infection would cause the computer to slow down even more. It rendered over 6,000 computers unusable.
Where Is He Now?
In 1989, Robert Tappan Morris was found to have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced to three years on probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $10,050 fine. He eventually founded Y Combinator and is now a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Born: November 8, 1965 (age 56)United States
- Other names: RTM
- Occupation: Entrepreneur, professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, partner at Y Combinator
