Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Robert Tappan Morris, Jr.
Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. (b. 1965?)is an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is best known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet.
Morris created the worm while he was a graduate student at Cornell University. The original intent, according to him, was to gauge the size of the Internet. However, the worm spread rapidly, infecting several thousand computers. On July 26, 1989, Morris became the first person to be indicted under the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act of 1986. He was convicted in 1990, sentenced to three years of probation, and ordered to pay a fine.
In 1995, Morris and Paul Graham founded Viaweb, a start-up company that created online store tools for websites. Yahoo! bought Viaweb in 1998, and incorporated their online store into Yahoo! Store.
Morris is now an associate professor at MIT.
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