Robert Tappan Morris

Robert Tappan Morris. He is an American computer scientist best known for creating the Morris worm in 1988, one of the first major computer worms to spread across the early Internet. The incident led to his conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and became a pivotal case in cybersecurity law. Morris later became a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder of the influential startup accelerator Y Combinator.

Early life and education

Born in Boston, he is the son of Bell Labs computer scientist Robert Morris. He developed an early interest in computing, often experimenting on systems at the AT&T Bell Laboratories where his father worked. Morris attended Harvard University for his undergraduate studies but transferred to Cornell University, where he pursued a degree in Computer Science. At Cornell, he conducted research within the university's computer science department, which provided access to the developing ARPANET and its associated protocols.

The Morris worm

On November 2, 1988, Morris released a worm from a computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that targeted vulnerabilities in Unix systems, including the sendmail program and the finger daemon. The worm's rapid replication overwhelmed thousands of systems on the Internet, including those at major institutions like NASA, Harvard University, and the University of California, Berkeley. The Federal Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation, and Morris became the first person convicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced to probation, community service, and a fine, with the case receiving widespread coverage in publications like The New York Times.

Academic career and research

After the incident, Morris completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Harvard University under advisor H. T. Kung. He joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999, where he became a tenured professor in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His research has focused on computer network architectures, operating system design, and peer-to-peer networks. He co-authored influential papers on scalable network structures and contributed to the development of the Chord distributed hash table, work that has impacted systems like the BitTorrent protocol.

Later work and industry contributions

In 2005, Morris co-founded the startup accelerator Y Combinator with Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, and Trevor Blackwell. The firm has provided early funding and guidance to hundreds of successful technology companies, including Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe. He also co-founded the online application software company Viaweb, which was later sold to Yahoo!. Morris remains an active partner at Y Combinator, advising startups on technical architecture and scaling challenges, and holds several patents related to web application technologies.

Personal life and legacy

Morris is married to Katherine Morris, a psychiatrist, and they have two children. His father, Robert Morris (cryptographer), was a chief scientist at the National Security Agency. The legacy of the Morris worm is profound, as it highlighted the need for coordinated computer emergency response teams and led to the creation of the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Despite the notoriety of the worm, he is widely respected in the technology industry for his subsequent academic and entrepreneurial contributions, which helped shape the modern venture capital landscape for software innovation.

Category:American computer scientists Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Category:Y Combinator people