Robert T. Morris, the author of the Internet Worm program, was convicted of a Federal felony in the case. The law involved was 18 USC 1030 (A)(5)(a), the Computer Crime and Abuse Act of 1986. He was found guilty in February of 1990 in US District Court in Syracuse, NY. In May of 1990, he was sentenced -- outside of Federal sentencing guidelines -- to 3 years of probation, 400 hours of community service, and $10,050 in fines plus probation costs. His lawyers appealed the conviction to the Circuit Court of Appeals, and the conviction was upheld. His lawyers then appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Court declined to hear the case -- leaving the conviction intact. For a while, Robert was (allegedly) working as a programmer (non-security related) for CenterLine Software (makers of CodeCenter, et. al.). More recently, Robert has been working on his Ph.D. under the direction of H.T. Kung at Harvard University. He is also involved with the ViaWeb company: . To the best of my knowledge, he has not spoken publicly about the incident, nor has he attempted to work in computer security. --gene spafford Feb 1996 Here's a [slightly edited] news article summarizing references to the Internet Worm: From: rgasch@nl.oracle.com (Robert Gasch) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Internet Worm SUMMARY (UNIX) Date: 23 Sep 92 11:33:51 GMT A while back I requested references regarding papers about the internet worm of November 88. Here is the promised summary of articles which I have collected. These seem to be the major reports covering the incident. There are doubtless a million other newspaper clippings one could add to this list but I doubt that most of those would be very informative as the articles below cover the subject in depth. The number after the authors name indicates the source I obtained the particular article from. All of these articles are availible from numerous sources so don't be surprised when you stuble across these articles somewhere else. I'd like to apologize that it took me so long to compile this list but I do not have direct FTP access and have to work via an FTP server which slows things down. Lastly I'd want to thank all the people who responded to my query and to all the kind souls that actually sent me articles. The archives which I obtained the articles from are a good place to nose around for other interesting things regarding security and viruses. I found some worthwhile reading there. If anybody has any other articles which I did not catch then please let me know as I'd like to read them myself. Here's the list: Eugene Spafford: The Internet Worm Program: an Analysis (Purdue CS Technical Report TR-CSD-823) (1) The Internet Worm Incident (Purdue CS Technical Report TR-CSD-933) (1) The Internet Worm: Crisis and Aftermath (2) ACM, June 1989, vol 32, number 6 Donn Seeley: A Tour of the Worm (1) - needs some hacking around before it will print on a non-laserwriter Mark Eichin and Jon Rochlins: With a Microscope and Tweezers: An Analysis of the Internet Virus of November 1988 (also knows as the MIT paper) (1) The Cornell Commission (Ted Eisenberg, David Gries and others): The Computer Worm (3) Availible from Cornell (call 607-255-3324) United States Court of Appeals (1) Document 928 F2D 504 - Court statement on Morris' appeal Denning Computers Under Attack: Intruders, Worms and Viruses Addison Wesley Pub Co Inc. (ISBN: 0-201-53067-8) I've never seen this one so I can't judge if it's any decent but I've included it for sake of completeness. Sources: (1) - coast.cs.purdue.edu (/pub/doc/morris_worm) (2) - any good technical library (3) - call or write cornell technical publications (607-255-3324) PS: European users may want to check out the archives in ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de Cheers - --> robert rgasch@nl.oracle.com