{"id":11573,"date":"2013-11-02T12:37:58","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T17:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=11573"},"modified":"2013-11-02T12:37:58","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T17:37:58","slug":"how-a-grad-student-trying-to-build-the-first-botnet-brought-the-internet-to-its-knees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=11573","title":{"rendered":"How a grad student trying to build the first botnet brought the Internet to its knees"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>On November 3, 1988, 25 years ago this Sunday, people woke up to find the Internet had changed forever. The night before, someone had released a malevolent computer program on the fledgling computer network. By morning, thousands of computers had become clogged with numerous copies of a computer &#8220;worm,&#8221; a program that spread from computer to computer much like a biological infection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/the-switch\/wp\/2013\/11\/01\/how-a-grad-student-trying-to-build-the-first-botnet-brought-the-internet-to-its-knees\/\">How a grad student trying to build the first botnet brought the Internet to its knees<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Robert Morris&#8217; father worked for the NSA at the time.<\/p>\n<p>From: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Morris_%28cryptographer%29\"><span dir=\"auto\">Robert Morris (cryptographer)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is a description of Morris in <a title=\"Clifford Stoll\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Clifford_Stoll\">Clifford Stoll<\/a>&#8216;s book <i><a title=\"The Cuckoo's Egg\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg\">The Cuckoo&#8217;s Egg<\/a><\/i>. Many readers of Stoll&#8217;s book remember Morris for giving Stoll a challenging mathematical <a title=\"Puzzle\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Puzzle\">puzzle<\/a> (originally due to <a class=\"mw-redirect\" title=\"John H. Conway\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_H._Conway\">John H. Conway<\/a>) in the course of their discussions on <a title=\"Computer security\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Computer_security\">computer security<\/a>: <i>What is the next number in the sequence 1 11 21 1211 111221?<\/i> (known as the <a title=\"Look-and-say sequence\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Look-and-say_sequence\">look-and-say sequence<\/a>). Stoll chose not to include the answer to this puzzle in <i>The Cuckoo&#8217;s Egg<\/i>, to the frustration of many readers.<sup class=\"reference\" id=\"cite_ref-8\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Morris_%28cryptographer%29#cite_note-8\"><span>[<\/span>8<span>]<\/span><\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On November 3, 1988, 25 years ago this Sunday, people woke up to find the Internet had changed forever. The night before, someone had released a malevolent computer program on the fledgling computer network. By morning, thousands of computers had &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=11573\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[284],"tags":[1217,317,645,1015],"class_list":["post-11573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-servers","tag-computer-worm","tag-email","tag-history","tag-unix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11574,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11573\/revisions\/11574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}