Below is a list of some of the more imaginative crimes of the past few years:
The Great Arpanet Worm. In November 1988, Robert T.
Morris, Jr.
wrote a program that penetrated the country's poorly defended computer
networks, replicating itself so fast that it created nationwide network
gridlock in a matter of days. It turns out that Robert T.
Morris, Sr., his father, is an expert in Unix viruses. He had little
to say about his son's achievement which, incidentally, resulted in the creation
of the nationwide Computer
Emergency Response Team.The
New California Gold Rush. A bank employee simply e-mailed Brinks to tell
them to deliver 44 kilos of gold to a P.O. box number in remote California. Someone
picked up the gold--and disappeared.
The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll. This
book details how the author, intrigued by a 75 cent accounting discrepancy
on a system in California, tracked down an East German spy, hacking into our
defense system. The book reads like a fictional detective story.Garbage Dump.
Angered by a piece Newsday journalist Josh Quittner had written
about hackers, the article's subjects hacked their way into
the root directories of IBM, Sprint and a small Internet provider
called Pipeline to fire thousands of abusive junk e-mail items to
his personal address, effectively preventing him from accessing
the Internet.
Return to top of page
Back to "Security
on the Internet" home page.
Back to "Getting Started on the WWW".
Security Project Members.
Please send comments about this page to Sue Young at ysue@echonyc.com.