No subject

"Cuckoo's Egg", by Cliff Stoll, and his accounts of that whole business
are interesting. Incidentally that's the book that hatched my interests
in things UNIX. And as it happens, I constantly, perhaps every couple of
months read it. Dennis, did you see my message on when a GUI was first
available with UNIX? If so, please contact me off-list. Or even on-list.
-------------------
Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon at worldnet.att.net
------------------------------------------------------------
"The Force will be with you...Always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
"Use the Force, Luke."  Obi-Wan Kenobi
(This company dedicates this E-Mail to General Obi-Wan Kenobi )
(This company dedicates this E-Mail to Master Yoda )



> -----Original Message-----
> From: tuhs-admin at minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:tuhs-admin at minnie.tuhs.org]
On
> Behalf Of Dennis Ritchie
> Sent: Monday, October 14, 2002 11:41 PM
> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org; dmr at plan9.bell-labs.com
> Subject: [TUHS] Re: rtm
> 
> Garcia is correct to praise the Hafner/Markoff account
> of the worm incident.  There were some details about
> the kids' accounts and exploits that Markoff decided
> to elide; by the time he wrote that chapter he had
> become rather sympathetic with the Morris family.
> 
> In 1995 another big incident occurred: the exploitation
> of the SYN TCP-connection takeover attack (Mitnick
> etc.)  Markoff got another front-page NYT story out
> of this (and a book with Shimomura).  I sent mail
> to Markoff at the time of the newspaper coverage reminding
> him that RTM had discovered the basic attack
> in 1985 (see CSTR 117 at
>  http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr.html );
> while here during a summer.  Markoff replied in part,
> 
> >Interesting how often RTM figures, one way or another, in your
front-page
> >stories, and of course the [Cyberpunk] book....
> >
> >        Dennis Ritchie
> 
>   yes, this is true. you know i sat there on sunday for about ten
minutes and
>    thought about whether i should include rtm in my story - it would
obviously
>   have spiced it up. i finally decided not to on the grounds that 1. i
have
>   done enough to mythologize him for one decade 2. he is probably
entitled
>   not to be dragged through all this again. i still wonder whether i
did the
>   readers a disservice...
> 
> Incidentally, "RTM Sr." was (while here) "rhm" by login name,
> and always called Bob; I don't think he actually has a middle name (at
least
> I don't know it.)  I think it's like Harry S Truman.  RTM
> is called Robert, and never used Jr.
> 
> About
> 
>  > [Bob] Morris, he said, was the kind of guy who always liked to
tinker with
>  > things, and if an object had buttons, Morris just had to push them.
>  > In fact, sometimes Morris was just a little too quick with his
fingers.
>  > On one side of a machine room was the light switch, and on the
other
>  > side was the power to the machine.
> 
>  > On at least one occasion, you guessed it -- Morris hit the wrong
switch.
>  > Some people hung a disk pack that got ruined around his neck, and
someone
>  > put up a big sign as a reminder: "THIS IS THE WEST WALL!"
> 
> I suspect that we may be dealing with the "Schryer filter" regarding
> some of the details.  Norm S. was right about Bob's being
> an aggressive investigator and fiddler,  but I don't
> connect the west-wall sign with Morris in particular, but my
> memory could be failing too.  Norman Wilson
> might have been around for advent of the sign.
> In the event, it had more to do with circuit breakers
> labelled in small print "east wall" and "west wall"
> and someone choosing the wrong one.
> 
> 	Dennis
> 
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs