The Nation : Panel Gives Report on Computer Prank

A rogue computer program that crippled a nationwide computer network last fall was neither the creation of a genius nor the act of a criminal, a commission at Cornell University has concluded. Cornell graduate student Robert Morris alone created the program that infected thousands of military and university computers, the panel’s report said. Morris, 23, who is on a leave of absence from the school’s doctoral program in computer science, refused to be interviewed by the commission, which was left to speculate as to the reasons Morris created the “worm,” an independent program that endlessly duplicates itself once placed in a computer system--as opposed to a “virus,” which inserts itself into a host program to propagate. The commission found that Morris probably wanted to spread the “worm” without detection but that, once it had been unleashed, he made only “minimal efforts” to stop its spread.