The Morris worm infected 10% of the Internet in 1988, causing millions in damage

Trevor Blackwell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Thirty-seven years ago this week, a Cornell graduate student accidentally brought the early Internet to its knees. Robert Morris released what became known as the Morris worm — not to cause harm, but to count how many computers were connected to the network. Instead, his program infected 6,000 of the …