In 1989, Morris was indicted for violating United States Code Title 18 (18 U.S.C. ยง 1030), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).[2] He was the first person to be indicted under this act. In December 1990, he was sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of community service, and a fine of $10,050 plus the costs of his supervision. He appealed, but the motion was rejected the following March.[4] Morris' stated motive during the trial was "to demonstrate the inadequacies of current security measures on computer networks by exploiting the security defects [he] had discovered."[2] He completed his sentence as of 1994.
He is a longtime friend and collaborator of Paul Graham. Graham dedicated his book ANSI Common Lisp to Morris. Graham lists Morris as one of his personal heroes, saying "he's never wrong."
to be friends with Paul Graham, i should make a worm. Got it.
Ehh in 1988 that worm was like an alien artifact from the cyberpunk future.
First "real" worm code, multi-platform, multiple payloads, "staging", first practical buffer overflow exploit and it does credential brute-forcing.
Heck it was not until nearly a decade later that people were really doing buffer overflows, and there were a LOT of easy overflows to be found.
I'd make the case rtm didn't just "make a worm" he foreshadowed the next few decades of computer exploitation.
Took a whole bunch of research and ideas, synthesised them, built an actual working "product" a decade or two ahead of its time and released it in a transgressive way.
If you are the kind of person who can do that I'm sure lots of people would like to be friends with you.