[govsec] Morris Worm and a Change in Direction

[blitz]

Great idea!

At 11:39 11/5/2004, you wrote:
>It's been over 6 months since I posted to GovSec;
>many of you probably forgot you were even subscribed.
>I originally founded this list with the hope of fostering
>meaningful discussion concerning the unique issues
>facing those entrusted with securing information
>systems in the public sector.  Such dialogue has, unfortunately,
>largely failed to materialize, for whatever reason, so
>I've decided to change my tack a bit.  I'm going to
>use this list to post items of interest to the
>government infosec community, about which you are,
>of course, free to comment.  I expect it will still be a very
>low volume list, but hopefully what little traffic you
>do receive will be of more use and interest.
>
>****************************************
>
>As most of you are no doubt already aware, Wednesday was the
>16th anniversary of the release of the Morris worm.  I expect
>many of us can remember exactly where we were and what we
>were doing when it hit--I was working in a medical research
>lab at a university in Texas.
>
>Worms have become commonplace in this day and age, but I wonder
>if people who have entered the infosec field since that
>November day in 1988 really understand what fundamental
>changes took place in the collective attitudes of those using
>the Internet.  Security was a personal affair back then--
>true anonymity was rare, and there simply weren't enough nodes
>to rely on some convoluted path for obscurity.   The bang path
>of your email messages was pretty much a roadmap back to
>you, for example--a sort of electronic manifestation of what
>biologists call the principle of "ontogeny recapitulating
>phylogeny."
>
>Security since those days has morphed into a multi-billion dollar
>industry and a major employer within the IT field, but I can't
>help but be curious how many of the newly-certificated experts
>out there understand the fundamental history of their
>chosen vocation. One very important aspect of being a professional
>soldier is a thorough knowledge of military history.  Every
>general who has come before you has contributed to the common
>pool of knowledge in the art and science of warfare.  If you
>aren't intimately familiar with their success and failures,
>you doom yourself, needlessly, to making their same mistakes.
>
>Today is a good day to take it upon yourselves to study the
>brief but rich history of infosec, and thereby to learn the
>lessons of the past--so that they won't become the all too
>familiar news stories of the future.
>
>Cheers,
>
>RGF
>
>
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