Robert Tappan Morris is a character of Internet lore, anyone who has studied Computer Science, Software Engineering or Computer Security will have heard of this guy.
He’s pretty much the fellow that made the Internet famous (for all the wrong reasons) and the first creator of a bit of self-replicating network based malware (now known as a worm) that did some serious damage. The worm is called the Morris Worm after it’s creator and this Sunday will be it’s 20 year anniversary.
It’s an interesting story to read if you are familiar with it and probably even more interesting if you’re not, so do check out the Wiki pages on the history of the situation.
There have been very few worms that have caused such widespread infection and failures. Blaster was quite memory and on the virus front I remember CIH was terrible.
Source: Network World