The Logbook: The first felony conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

This is the story of the Morris Worm, one of the first computer worms distributed through the Internet. The worm also resulted in the first felony conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The Morris Worm was developed in October 1988 by its namesake, Robert Morris, who at the time was a Cornell University graduate student. According to court documents, Morris didn't create the worm with malicious intent but "to demonstrate the inadequacies of current security measures on computer networks by exploiting the security defects" he found in various computer networks.