timsmith@SUN.COM (Timothy G. Smith - Technical Consulting) (02/07/90)
The following text is a letter to the editor that was published in the
Tuesday, Feb. 6, 1990 issue of "The Capital". "The Capital" is the
local paper in the Annapolis MD area. RTM's parents live a few miles
north of Annapolis so the Worm and the trial were of interest to some
of the locals.
I am sending this out to the tcp-ip mailing list for informational
purposes. Some might be amused, some might be annoyed, some might not
care. I thought the letter's content was was worth passing on to the
rest of the net who are not priviledged enough to get home delivery of
"The Capital".
Please do not start the
virus/worm/it_was_bad/it_was_good/hang_him/give_him_a_medal thing
again.
Yes this is a real letter. For those folks who want to verify the
existence of this letter "The Capital" can be reached at (301)
268-5000.
I hope I have not violated any copyrights or whatever by typing this
in and posting it.
enjoy,
Tim Smith - Technical Consultant
US mail:Sun Microsystems E-mail:
6797 Dorsey Road internet:tgsmith@east.sun.com
Suite 4 uucp :sundc!tgsmith
Baltimore, MD 21227
MaBell :(301)379-5000
NB: The usual applies... I take sole responsibility (and claim) for
this message - except for the stuff below which I typed in from the
newspaper.
Letter to Editor follows:
###########################################################################
Support Morris
Robert Morris, the recently convicted computer hacker, is the son of a
dedicated, loyal public servant who pioneered in alerting the computer
community to potential security problems, including viruses.
Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on how you look at recent
events - the son accomplished with one dramatic indiscretion what his
father has worked to do for years - everyone now knows of the
dangers! Nevertheless, Robert's father was very upset at his son's
action.
The jury was right to return a guilty verdict, but the felony charge
seems excessive. Certainly we cannot allow anyone to get away with
gaining unauthorized access to computer systems. It was poor judgment
on the son's part, but was not done maliciously.
Robert has already suffered enough for his computer experiment. He
has over $100,000 in legal bills, been kicked out of graduate school,
lost his scholarship, and is now a convicted felon with diminished
civil rights. Further punishment would be cruel and inhumane, and a
waste of an extraordinary talent which this country needs. I hope and
pray the judge realizes this when he decides on Robert's sentence.
For those who lost hours of work - if you ignore this alert, your next
loss through system failure, power failure, hacking or sabotage might
be far more devastating. The "public health" message for the computer
community is this: if your computer interfaces with another computer,
it also interfaces with all the computers that one interfaces with.
Put an electronic condom on it, becuase the next virus might be fatal.
To those who are concerned about the nation's security - take heart!
Many computers at facilities around the country, and all classified
networks, have virus "shields" to protect them. The Morris virus did
not infect them.
Robert Morris - and the world- have learned valuable lessons through
all of this. Let's leave it at that!
In the meantime, however, the kid is broke! If you would like to help
him, please send a contribution to The Robert T. Morris Legal Defense
Fund, P.O. Box 44132, Washington, D.C. 20026-4132.
Loriel S. Bieri
Arnold