Invitation to Cybersecurity

3. The Adversary of Cybersecurity: Hackers 63 Figure 3.8 The Cap’n Crunch toy whistle that triggered operator mode. Robert Tappan Morris, AKA RTM, unleashed the world’s first crippling malware which became known as the Morris Worm on the Internet in 1988. It was the product of an experiment gone awry that was mostly motivated by curiosity. Unfortunately, it crashed many computers and cost organizations a substantial amount of time and money in recovery costs. He was twenty-two, had just graduated from Harvard, and was starting his PhD program at Cornell University. His dad, Robert Morris, held a high-level position at the NSA. He was the first hacker convicted of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and was sentenced to a fine and community service. Even though he broke the law and was charged with a crime, he was a nuisance hacker and not a cyber criminal. More on RTM in Chapter 10. Figure 3.9 Gray hat and later white hat hackers Kevin Mitnick (left) and Kevin Poulsen (right). Max Butler, AKA Max Vision, whose online nick was Iceman, was a gray hat hacker who was sentenced to prison in 2010. He may have designed the first ever spear phishing attack which he used to steal login credentials from employees of an organization he later hacked. He had enormous success in stealing and selling credit card credentials (i.e.,

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