Somewhere, a Dark Genius Concocted the Cheesiest Computer Virus Ever
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slice.mit.edu
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Before the term "computer virus" was common in our daily discourse, it had to be explained to the general public—apparently with a sufficient amount of melodrama and intrigue. Watch this TV newscast from 1988 as it tackles the new threat with lines like, "It arrived at MIT in the middle of the night. The students were safe. Their computers weren't" and "The suspect? Somewhere, a dark genius."
Ah, the Eighties. You may also enjoy the retro hardware with actual floppy disk drives and the use of footage from movies and an Atari video game to drive home the seriousness of the situation.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2i_6j55bS0&hl=en&fs=1&]
Comments
Eric
Fri, 06/26/2009 2:59pm
Most notably, the originator of the worm (rtm, Robert T. Morris) is now a computer science professor at MIT. I know a number of people who have taken classes with him... unsurprisingly, he's supposed to be quite good.
Ralph
Tue, 06/23/2009 10:23pm
The video has a few factual errors, but it does have more entertainment value, notably, the appearance of a francis cornworth's older brother (the glasses), and the conjecture that MIT was attacked.
In fact, MIT was used as the site for the launch of the Morris worm, since Morris didn't want it traced back to Cornell, where he was a grad student at the time.
Notably, Morris' dad was chief cryptographer at the NSA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris