The Accidental Architects of Our Digital Defenses

The Accidental Architects of Our Digital Defenses: A Tale of Curiosity, Pranks, and the Worm that Woke the Internet

Sometimes, our most innocent-looking small deeds can create unforeseen ripple effects that shape the future. Such was the case in the foundational days of cybersecurity. You will meet the unlikely pioneers whose innocent experiments that spiraled into unintended chaos and shaped the core concepts.

Before cybersecurity was a multi-billion dollar industry, it was a wild west where curious minds unleashed the first digital threats.

It is a constant, often invisible battleground against sophisticated threats. Yet, rewind a few decades, the internet was a newborn, trusting realm. Its guardians were few, and its vulnerabilities largely unknown.

When the Internet was in its innocent dawn. A handful of curious minds, some driven by academic pursuit, others by youthful mischief.... accidently laid the foundation for every firewall, antivirus program, and security protocol we now rely on.

Have you ever looked up answers to these interesting questions?

• What is the history of computer viruses?
• Who created the first computer virus?
• Who were the earliest creators of computer viruses and worms?
• Who are the pioneers of cybersecurity (even if accidental)?
• How did early computer viruses spread?

Let me bring some interesting information of few accidental architects. I hope you will enjoy it…

1. The Whispering Ghost of ARPANET – Bob Thomas and the First Stirrings (1971)

The untold stories of the first computer virus creators reveal how seemingly harmless experiments sparked an urgent need for digital defenses.

Our tale begins not with malice, but with a whisper. It’s 1971, and the internet, then known as ARPANET. It was a quiet network of university and research computers. A company BBN (Bolt, Beranek and Newman) played a crucial role in the early development of the internet's precursor, ARPANET. At BBN, a young computer scientist named Bob Thomas had a question: "could a program truly move on its own across this new digital landscape?"

What was the first computer worm?

Driven by pure experimental curiosity, Thomas coded "Creeper." Creeper wasn't destructive. It wasn't even particularly annoying. It would simply jump from one DEC PDP-10 mainframe to another, displaying a polite message: "I'M THE CREEPER : CATCH ME IF YOU CAN."

Bob Thomas Creeper was a self-deleting digital ghost, leaving no trace as it moved. Thomas proved his theory: self-replicating code was possible. He didn't know it then, but he had released the world's first computer worm.

Bob Thomas's work was a foundational moment in computing history. It showcased the potential for code to travel and replicate autonomously across networks. A concept that would later be exploited by malicious actors to create the viruses and worms we know today. His experiment inadvertently highlighted a fundamental security challenge. The emerging internet would eventually have to deal with.

How did the internet's security evolve from its early days?

The Unseen Ripple:

While Bob Thomas continued his career as a respected computer scientist at BBN. His simple experiment had an immediate, though quiet, ripple effect. His colleague, Ray Tomlinson (also famous for inventing email). He created "Reaper," a program designed to seek out and delete Creeper. This reactive measure is widely considered the first anti-malware program. It planted the seed for the massive antivirus industry that would take shape in the coming decades.

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2. The Prank That Became a Poem – Rich Skrenta and the Apple's Blossom (1982)

Fast forward a decade. Personal computers are blossoming in homes, bringing computing power to the masses.

In the era before the internet was widespread, floppy disks were the primary means of transferring data. So the virus spread quickly through sharing.

In Pittsburgh, a naughty 15-year-old high school student named Rich Skrenta was already a local legend for his floppy disk pranks. His friends, tired of his programs shutting down their Apple IIs or displaying teasing messages.

When his friends became wary of accepting disks from him, he devised a way to deliver his pranks stealthily.

Who created the first computer virus? 

In 1982, he unleashed "Elk Cloner." This wasn't a network worm, but a boot sector virus that traveled on physical floppy disks.

If you booted your Apple II with an infected disk, Rich Skrenta's 'Elk Cloner' would silently copy itself to the computer's memory and then infect any uninfected disks you later inserted. Every 50th boot, it would reveal its true, playful nature by displaying a short, rhyming poem on the screen:

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks

It will infiltrate your chips

Yes, it's Cloner!

It will stick to you like glue

It will modify ram too Send in the Cloner!

Elk Cloner was harmless, a digital limerick. But it spread like wildfire among Apple II users. It demonstrated how easily a program could propagate without explicit user action. Rich Skrenta had proven that even a high schooler's prank could become a widespread digital phenomenon. It gave the world one of its first glimpses into the potential for unwanted code.

From Pranks to Platforms:

Rich Skrenta went on to become a significant figure in the technology world despite his early notoriety. After graduating from Northwestern University, he worked at companies like Commodore and Sun Microsystems.

He co-founded The Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Later acquired by Netscape. He also co-founded Topix, a news aggregation site. Blekko, a web search engine that was acquired by IBM for its Watson project. Skrenta's work moved from exploiting the personal computer's vulnerabilities to building foundational internet services. He guided the development of more robust web architectures as he understood the groundworks of systems.

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3. Lahore's Accidental Global Phenomenon – Basit & Amjad Farooq Alvi and the "Brain" Behind the Chaos (1986)

Basit Farooq Alvi and Amjad Farooq Alvi are two Pakistani brothers who are famous in computer history for creating the Brain virus in 1986. This virus is considered to be the first computer virus for IBM PC compatible computers. It spread "in the wild" (meaning, outside of a lab or the creators' direct control).

What was the motivation behind creating the Brain virus? 

The brothers ran a computer store in Lahore, Pakistan, called "Brain Computer Services." They developed the Brain virus as an anti-piracy measure to protect their medical software from illegal copying. They frustrated because customers were pirating their programs without paying.

Like Elk Cloner, Brain was a boot sector virus spread via floppy disks. It was designed to replace the boot sector of pirated disks with its own code. It was slowing down the drive and marking some sectors as "bad" (though it caused no actual data loss).

"Stealth" Features: It was one of the first "stealth" viruses. It was capable to hide its presence by making the infected boot sector appear normal when a user tried to examine it.

Calling Card:

The virus included a hidden message in its code with the brothers' names, address, and phone numbers. "Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Amjads (pvt). BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES 730 NIZAM. BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN LAHORE-PAKISTAN PHONE: 430791,443248,280530. Beware of this VIRUS. Contact us for vaccination"

To their surprise, the virus spread far beyond Pakistan. It spread globally. It reached the United States, Europe, Australia, and other places.  The brothers soon found themselves bombarded with phone calls from furious computer users. in the U.S., UK, and beyond, demanding explanations and "disinfectants."

What they intended as a local deterrent became a global digital incident. It is confirming that even well-intentioned code could have unforeseen and uncontrollable reach. Moreover it made the "Brain" virus a very precise, although accidentally, global calling card for its creators.

From Virus Creators to Internet Providers:

The Alvi brothers, despite the initial "trouble," learned from their experience and pivoted into legitimate tech ventures. They founded Brain NET, which grew into Brain Telecommunication Limited. It became one of Pakistan's largest and earliest Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

The "Brain" virus, by highlighting the ease of floppy disk transmission, forced early software developers and users to consider methods of protecting portable media. This contributed to the need of scanning tools and safer file sharing practices. From the other part of the world something groundbreaking in the cybersecurity industry is yet to come soon. 

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4. The Worm That Woke the Internet – Robert Tappan Morris and the Great Slowdown (1988)

Robert Tappan Morris grew up with a strong background in computing. His father was a prominent cryptographer and computer scientist at Bell Labs. Later he became the chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center (a division of the NSA). This environment exposed the younger Morris to advanced computer concepts from an early age. In 1988, he was a graduate student at Cornell University. During his graduation he discovered many security loopholes.

When was the Morris Worm released:

While a graduate student at Cornell, Morris designed and released a computer worm. His intention was to demonstrate the inadequacies of current security measures on computer networks by exploiting security defects he had discovered. He released  The Morris Worm (November 2, 1988) from MIT, rather than from Cornell in an attempt to disguise its source. 

How the Worm Spread:

The Morris Worm was highly sophisticated for its time. It exploited several vulnerabilities in Unix systems to spread:

• Sendmail Debug Mode: A flaw in the debug mode of the Unix sendmail program, which handles email.
• Fingerd Buffer Overflow: A buffer overflow vulnerability in the fingerd network service, used to look up information about users.
• Rexec/Rsh Trust: It leveraged "transitive trust" where users had set up network logins with no password requirements via remote execution (rexec) and remote shell (rsh).
• Password Guessing: It also attempted to guess passwords, using common words and combinations.

What was the impact of Morris Worm?

The Unintended "Bug" and Its Impact: Morris intended the worm to spread slowly and check each computer to determine if it was already infected. If a machine was already infected, the worm was supposed to skip it to avoid overwhelming systems.

But, there was a crucial coding error or design flaw in this worm. This error led to the worm repeatedly reinfecting systems even if they were already compromised (specifically, it would reinfect about 14% of the time, regardless of prior infection status).

This flaw caused the worm to replicate aggressively and consume excessive system resources. It was slowing down computers to the point of being unusable or causing them to crash.

Widespread Disruption: Within 24 hours, the worm affected an estimated 6,000 of the approximately 60,000 computers connected to the internet at that time. , which constituted about 10% of the entire internet.

It affected: Universities (Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Cornell), government agencies (NASA, the Pentagon), and research centers . Essential military and university functions slowed dramatically, and emails were delayed for days.

Economic Cost: While the worm wasn't designed to destroy data, the downtime and recovery efforts cost millions of dollars (estimates ranged from $100,000 to $10,000,000 at the time).

Did the creators of early malware face legal consequences?

The First Conviction Under the CFAA: The Morris Worm incident was a landmark case in computer law. In 1989, Robert Tappan Morris became the first person to be indicted under the then-new Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1986.

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 avoided jail time.

The Morris Worm incident was a rude awakening for the nascent internet community.

Cybersecurity Wake-up Call: It brought widespread public and governmental attention to the vulnerabilities of computer networks and underscored the critical need for cybersecurity. It's often cited as the event that truly kickstarted the field of cybersecurity.

How did early malware incidents influence modern cybersecurity?

Creation of CERT/CC: Just days after the attack, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded the immediate establishment of the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) at Carnegie Mellon University. This marked the birth of formalized, coordinated incident response, a model adopted globally by national CERTs and security operations centers (SOCs).

New Wave of Research: It provokes significant research into network security, intrusion detection, and more robust system design.

Post-Conviction Career: Despite the notoriety, Robert Tappan Morris went on to have a highly successful career:

• He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University.
• In 1995, he co-founded Viaweb with Paul Graham, a pioneering company that developed software for building online stores (one of the first web applications). Viaweb was later acquired by Yahoo! for nearly $50 million.
• He is also a co-founder of Y Combinator, one of the most influential startup accelerators and venture capital firms in the world. He has funded companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and Reddit.
• Currently, he is a tenured professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), focusing on computer networking, distributed systems, and operating systems. He elected for National Academy of Engineering in 2019.

Robert Tappan Morris's story is a compelling example of how a misstep in a youthful experiment can lead to profound and lasting changes in technology and law. It ultimately shaping the digital world we live in today.

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Summary: The Unforeseen Legacy

From Bob Thomas's "Creeper" providing the theoretical blueprint, to Rich Skrenta's poetic prank revealing the contagious nature of code, from the Alvi brothers' anti-piracy misadventure highlighting global reach, to Robert Morris's internet-crippler that forced a collective awakening.

These early pioneers, often without malicious intent, opened our eyes to the inherent risks of networked computing. They forced us to confront the fact that code, once released, can take on a life of its own, capable of causing far-reaching effects.

Their stories are a powerful reminder that the field of cybersecurity wasn't born out of a strategic plan, but from the unintended consequences of curiosity, learning, and human error. Their individual initiatives, though seemingly isolated, collectively painted a picture of the internet's fragility and the imperative for robust defenses.

Today, as AI-generated cyber-attacks and the digital battlefield grows more complex. We continue to build upon the lessons learned from such accidental architects of our digital defenses, and intentionally generated cyber-attacks. We are forever striving to catch the digital whispers, poems, worms and complex cyber-attacks that continue to evolve.

There was a common thread between these stories. They followed their passion. Everyone's effort is important to make cyberspace safe. Who knows your creation can become history someday?…

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