(November 8, 1965- )
Created the Morris Worm in an attempt to gauge the size of the internet (1988)
Co-founder of ViaWeb, a start-up that made software for online stores (1995)
Associate Professor at MIT (1999)

He inadvertently caused an estimated $10 million in damages with the internet worm he unleashed.
He became the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1989), and was sentenced to three years probation, 400 hours community service and a $10,000 fine.
Ironically, his father is a computer security expert for the National Security Agency.

He exposed major security flaws in Unix that could have caused much worse losses if they had been exploited by someone deliberately trying to cause damage.
He demonstrated the truth of one his father's sayings: 'The golden rules to ensure computer security are: do not own a computer, do not power it on, and do not use it.'
ViaWeb was sold for $45 million in stock to Yahoo!, who renamed it the Yahoo! Store (1998).

Credit: C. Fishel

http://aia.li/23576

E-mail Link to Friend | Report updates or corrections for this profile

For 2010, as of last week, Out of 4 Votes: 100% Annoying
For 2009, Out of 25 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
In 2008, Out of 76 Votes: 71.05% Annoying

• C. Fishel's Profiles [Series 13]
• Computer Geeks
• Criminals
• I Attended Cornell
• I Attended Harvard
• I Earned a Doctorate
• Profiles 23501-23750 (Ranked: 23576)