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The Morris Worm

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The Morris Worm The Morris Worm: The First Significant Cyber Attack Cause Mapping® On November 3, 1988, Robert Morris, a graduate student at Cornell, created and released the first computer worm that could spread between computers and Why? Because... copy itself. Morris didn’t have malicious intent and his worm appears to have been more the result of intellectual curiosity rather than a purposefully destructive cyber-attack, but an error in the program led to it propagating much faster than he intended. The worm significantly disrupted the young internet, introduced the Effect Cause world to the concept of a software worm and served as a wakeup call on the importance of cybersecurity. Basic Cause-and-Effect Relationship Start Simple A Cause Map, or visual root cause analysis, can be used to analyze this issue. A Cause Map is built by asking “why” questions and using the answers to visually lay out the causes that contributed to an issue to intuitively show the cause-and- effect relationships. Start by asking a few why questions. 5-Why Cause Map Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Programmer Programmer Computers A worm was Impact to Programmer is believed the Error in the didn't intend to Programmer infected by introduced to Regulatory prosecuted worm was program disable underestimated worm the internet "harmless computers the speed of Evidence: Statement propagation by programmer. Worm quickly Verified by examining re-infected AND the code of the worm. computers over Programmer and over believed the Potential Intended to Expand as Needed Continue asking "why" questions to continue adding worm was reinfection was make the worm causes to the Cause Map. Mapping out all the causes that contributed to an "harmless" AND part of the difficult to issues ensures that all facets of a problem are well understand and helps design defend against Worm didn't Evidence: The programmer facilitate the development of effective, detailed solutions that can be Error in the behave as AND wanted one copy of the implemented to reduce the risk of a similar issues in the future. program intended worm to infect each computer, but designed the worm to duplicate itself every seventh time a AND A worm was computer indicated it already Impact to Programmer is had the worm to make the introduced to Inadequate Regulatory prosecuted the internet worm hard to defend testing against. 28-Why Cause Map Increased Impact to Computers Programmer Internet was awareness of Customer infected by was trying to still in its need for cyber worm gauge the size infancy Service security AND of internet Significant Little focus on cyber security Impact to costs from loss AND at time Financial of internet ~10% of Internet access connected Worm exploited systems Known software known This was the disabled bugs weren't AND weakness fixed first major Evidence: It's "attack" on internet Recovery Significant estimated that more Evidence: The Only a small than 6,000 university, Impact to efforts took connectivity programmer exploited number of Labor/ Time many man- issues with research centers and weak passwords and military computers users were on hours internet known vulnerabilities were infected. in the Unix sendmail, internet finger and rsh/rexec programs. AND To learn more visit our website at www.thinkreliability.com email: [email protected] phone: 281-412-7766 Impact to Delay in Many Attempt to ~10% of Production/ accessing computers prevent spread Internet See Same Schedule internet disconnected of computer connected Cause Copyright 2019 ThinkReliability, Novem, Inc. from internet worm systems .
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