It happened on 2 November 1988 - The 1st attack #hackercalled the #vermediMorrisIt came at the hands of an American student, Robert Tappan Morris, who was working on a programme capable of self-replicating and installing itself in computers connected to the Internet. This 'worm' exploited vulnerabilities in the Unix operating system sendMail and Finger.
The programme was able to access computers via a sendmail error, the programme used to manage e-mail, a finger error that allowed it to obtain information on users of other computers, and via a password detection programme.
To be fair, we must say that this malware was not launched intentionally and was not written with the aim of creating damage, but with the intention of assessing the size of the Internet. It did, however, cause considerable damage: some 6,000 machines were infected for a total economic loss of 100,000 to 10,000,000 dollars.
The programme was designed to self-delete when the computer was switched off, but at the time machines were rarely switched off, which led to an uncontrolled spread of the virus.
Thousands of computers connected to the network became unusable, to the point that, despite the fact that the presidential elections were only a few days away, many of the front pages of newspapers were dedicated to what had happened.
Morris realised that his worm was expanding more vertiginously than expected and asked a fellow student at Harvard for help; together they sent an anonymous message online, containing all the instructions for repairing the infected machines.
Among the great victims were the systems of NASA, Berkley, Stanford and other honourable institutions.
The US government, in response to the Morris worm created the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team), a team of computer experts designed to prevent similar events from happening again. CERT has been on the alert on security issues ever since.
🔗 The Morris worm demonstrated the flaws that can exist in security systems and the powerful consequences of cyber attacks.
Even today, the inadequacy of protection measures on networks can still be observed: companies and private individuals have not yet equipped themselves with suitable tools to counteract the #cyberattack.
But playing defence is not enough, it is necessary to upgrade the #strategies of the #security of companies and organisations.
👉 Cyber security is one of the key assets, we need to invest in research and innovation to have an increasingly digital, connected and reliable business.
