Editing Morris worm (section)

== Effects ==
During the Morris appeal process, the US court of appeals estimated the cost of removing the virus from each installation was in the range of $200–$53,000. Possibly based on these numbers, Stoll, a [[systems administrator]] known for discovering and subsequently tracking the hacker [[Markus Hess]] three years earlier, estimated for the US [[Government Accountability Office]] that the total economic impact was between $100,000 and $10,000,000. Stoll helped fight the worm, writing in 1989 that "I surveyed the network, and found that two thousand computers were infected within fifteen hours. These machines were dead in the water—useless until disinfected. And removing the virus often took two days." Stoll commented that the worm showed the danger of [[monoculture (computer science)|monoculture]], because "If all the systems on the [[ARPANET]] ran [[Berkeley Unix]], the virus would have disabled all fifty thousand of them."{{r|stoll1989}}

It is usually reported that around 6,000 major UNIX machines were infected by the Morris worm. Graham claimed, "I was there when this statistic was cooked up, and this was the recipe: someone guessed that there were about 60,000 computers attached to the Internet, and that the worm might have infected ten percent of them".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html#f4n |title=The Submarine |publisher=Paulgraham.com |access-date=February 5, 2014 |archive-date=April 19, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050419041258/http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html#f4n |url-status=live }}</ref> Stoll estimated that "only a couple thousand" computers were affected.<ref name="stoll1989"/>

The Internet was partitioned for several days, as regional networks disconnected from the [[National Science Foundation Network|NSFNet]] backbone and from each other to prevent recontamination while cleaning their own networks.

The Morris worm prompted [[DARPA]] to fund the establishment of the [[CERT Coordination Center|CERT/CC]] at [[Carnegie Mellon University]], giving experts a central point for coordinating responses to network emergencies.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cert.org/encyc_article/tocencyc.html |title=Security of the Internet. CERT/CC |publisher=Cert.org |date=September 1, 1998 |access-date=February 5, 2014 |archive-date=April 15, 1998 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19980415061511/http://www.cert.org/encyc_article/tocencyc.html |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Gene Spafford]] also created the Phage mailing list to coordinate a response to the emergency.

Morris was tried and convicted of violating [[United States Code]] Title{{nbsp}}18 ({{USC|18|1030}}), the [[Computer Fraud and Abuse Act]],<ref name=usvmorris505>{{cite court |litigants=United States v. Morris (1991) |vol=928 |reporter=F.2d |opinion=504 |pinpoint=505 |court=2d Cir. |date=1991 |url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=551386241451639668 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190801213124/https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=551386241451639668 |url-status=live }}</ref> in ''[[United States v. Morris (1991)|United States v. Morris]]''. After appeals, he was sentenced to three years' probation, 400 hours of community service, and a fine of {{US$|10050|1991|round=-3}} plus the costs of his supervision.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/05/us/computer-intruder-is-put-on-probation-and-fined-10000.html "Computer Intruder is Put on Probation and Fined"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090214111830/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE1D71038F936A35756C0A966958260&scp=2&sq=robert+tappan+morris&st=nyt |date=February 14, 2009 }} by John Markoff, ''The New York Times''.</ref> The total fine ran to $13,326, which included a $10,000 fine, $50 special assessment, and $3,276 cost of probation oversight.

The Morris worm has sometimes been referred to as the "Great Worm", named after the devastating "[[Dragons (Middle-earth)|Great Worms]]" of [[J. R. R. Tolkien|Tolkien]]. The Morris worm had a devastating effect on the Internet at that time, both in overall system downtime and in psychological impact on the perception of security and reliability of the Internet.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/Great-Worm.html|title=Great Worm|publisher=catb.org|access-date=November 2, 2005|archive-date=July 2, 2003|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030702185617/http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/Great-Worm.html|url-status=live}}</ref>