SCENES FROM SCIENCE
Hacking for adventure
THE hero of an adventure which has just been giving the American press, not to mention the United States De- partment of Justice, something to talk about is called Robert Morris Jr. The Justice Department has just had him up for trial and found him guilty. What did Robert Morris Jr, bright boy aged 24, do? He hacked: he wrote a computer programme which, he says, was de- signed to demonstrate the weaknesses of the nation's computer network: he released it into the said network.
His programme was what was pre- viously known to a small group of aficionados as a 'virus', and he suc- ceeded in inserting it into the network illicitly, where, before he could do anything, it was reproducing and trans- mitting itself, virus-like, all over the continent. Thousands of computers were thrown, including dozens in gov- ernment labs.
He meant no harm, he says. But that isn't the kind of statement to weigh with a Department of Justice. The Computer Fraud and Abuse act, under which they tried him, was so far untested. In any case, it was aimed at preventing bank fraud, and is confined to crimes com- mitted on federal interest computers. To be charged, the suspect must have used a computer in two or more states or have illegally 'accessed', as we now say, a government computer.
Mr Morris was a graduate student of Cornell (New York State) when he first released the virus, by sending it to a machine at Harvard (State of Mas- sachusetts). From there it got into government machines galore. Did he access the infected computer himself? Or did the virus just take over indepen- dently of him, thus a really up-to-date sorcerer's apprentice?
Mr Morris pled not guilty. (Inciden- tally the virus did no permanent damage to the system.) Finding him innocent, the court would have demonstrated that the Act had failed: finding him guilty, that the whole set-up needed to be revised to meet modern eventualities. Guilty, he is liable to years in prison and a huge fine.
One cannot believe that he won't appeal, when one hopes he'll be served with a less draconian fate — or better still, let off. Otherwise he'll have only the consolation of such fame as accrues from being the onlie true begetter of 'The Cornell Virus'.
William Cooper
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