While it sounds like a nasty parasite or the villain of a Sci-Fi movie, the Morris worm was one of the first computer viruses ever launched online, and the subject of the first felony conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Created by a graduate student to gauge the size of the internet, the Morris worm was intended to be an intellectual exercise. However, it went awry and caused millions of dollars worth of damage, infecting 2,000 computers within 15 hours.

The worm was named after its creator, Cornell University programming student Robert Tappan Morris, who developed the self-replicating program to test the boundaries of the internet. It rapidly infected the limited (by today’s standards) computers connected to the internet. In an attempt to cover his tracks, Morris launched it by hacking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) network.

An estimated 6,000 machines, deprived of computing resources as the worm depleted them, were eventually shut down and rendered inoperable.

In 1991, Morris received a sentence of three years probation, 400 hours of community service and a $10,050 fine, and became the first person to be indicted under the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Today, the worm can still be found on a '90s icon ~ a floppy disk held at the Computer History Museum.

Morris went on to become a renowned academic and tech founder. He is currently a tenured professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at MIT.

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