November 4, 2025
The worm that launched 1,000 comments
This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Internet within 24 hours
Commenters roast the date slip, cry Ivy privilege, and wonder how the hacker landed at MIT
TLDR: In 1988, the Morris worm accidentally swamped about 10% of the early internet in a day, says the FBI. Commenters clap back at the article’s date, debate Ivy League privilege and rumored connections, and argue whether we’ve just been lucky—or whether the next mega-worm is only a decision away.
The nostalgia post about the 1988 Morris worm—one of the first big internet outbreaks—sparked a full-on comment brawl. First punch: the calendar cops. Multiple readers flag the headline’s timing, pointing to Wikipedia saying it happened on Nov 2, 1988, not this week—cue eye-rolls and “publish button got excited” jokes. Then things turn spicy: the top thread calls out elite Ivy League privilege. One commenter lists the arc like a true plot twist—released it via MIT to dodge blame, got convicted, then finished a Harvard PhD and landed an MIT professorship. “Connections much?” they ask, and the pitchforks come out.
Others dredge up Clifford Stoll’s rumor about a young Paul Graham cheering the “brilliant project,” with users demanding: has PG ever weighed in? Meanwhile, the doomsayers wonder why we haven’t seen more mega-worms. “It hasn’t happened because nobody’s done it,” writes one, comparing it to designer plagues—chilling, even if today’s defenses are better.
For newcomers: a “worm” is a self-spreading program. This one, per the FBI retrospective, wasn’t meant to be evil—just measure internet size—but a bug helped it overrun about 10% of the internet in 24 hours. The meme of the day: “had RTM (Robert Tappan Morris) actually RTM,” quips one commenter—read the manual, world saved?
Key Points
- •In 1988, the Morris worm infected about 10% of the Internet within 24 hours.
- •The FBI describes the worm as a non-malicious program with a programming error intended to measure Internet size.
- •Morris released the worm by hacking into an MIT computer from his Cornell terminal in Ithaca, New York.
- •The worm was written in C and targeted BSD UNIX systems, including VAX and Sun-3 machines.
- •It exploited a backdoor in the Internet’s mail system and a bug in the finger program, enabling autonomous replication and spread.