Computer virus 1988
- Thread starter kaiser
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The irony, given the normal bandwagons that are never too slow, these days?kaiser":iq1y37po said:
It ran on Unix.
highlandsflyer
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Neil":3qcvt74p said:The irony, given the normal bandwagons that are never too slow, these days?kaiser":3qcvt74p said:
It ran on Unix.
Neil":1tkyv4uv said:
Though as Dos or CP/M PCs were very unlikely to be networked in those days I suppose it had a better chance of spreading on Unix systems...
I do remember the days when you could run an anti-virus program from a floppy, probably a year old or more and you could feel quite happy that your PC was clean! On the other hand, I think more of the viruses that did exist in those days were properly destructive rather than just trying to use your machine for nefarious purposes...
Strictly speaking, in this instance it was a worm.ajm":2ag1s6o6 said:
That said, in around 88, I would have used networked CP/M machines plus networked CDOS machines (largely only LAN, though).
All that said, back in those days, Unix was far from being a secure OS.
Neil":2ybdbu6p said:
True (though I suppose then, as now, a lot depended on exactly how it was set up)... even quite a lot later on I worked at a University where we had labs full of Sun workstations all with public IP addresses and every service you can think of wide open to the Internet - crazy even then!
Even if being careful about setup - and most weren't back then with Unix - it still was far from the most secure thing out there.ajm":92ecd0xo said:
True enough, there wasn't anything like the same threats, demand, or risk - but a lot of the time, you'll here people talking about Unix and it's origins as this truly great, white-sheet-of-paper design of OS, that was pretty strong out of the box.
Well I was on the ground in the industry back then - and it wasn't. Most people, then, were doing serious work in mainframe environments, that were regimented, reasonably secure, and very organised. Unix was quite a culture change from that, I can tell you.
Don't get me wrong - probably the most interesting and happiest times I've had in the industry, were as a systems programmer working on Unix OSs, but all the same, it took a lot of work, back then, to do anything decent with it, in the same way as people were using mainframes, back then. Now it's also true, the game was changing, as was the use of computers, but all the same, comparing mainframes to Unix back then, or actually evaluating how secure Unix tended to be, in reality, is quite different from how it's purported these days.
If I'm not mistaken, this news report is referring to the Morris Worm, written by the son of legendary cryptographer, Bob Morris.
(A good 'insider' account of the Morris Worm was given by Cliff Stoll in his book, "The Cuckoo's Egg")
(A good 'insider' account of the Morris Worm was given by Cliff Stoll in his book, "The Cuckoo's Egg")
I read The Cucko's Egg in the early 90s. Back then, the manager of the tech support area I worked in, slightly-tongue-in-cheek - said it was a requirement of the job to read it.JohnH":2p623ljg said:
And yes, it is the Morris Worm that's referred to in the report.
