The Morris worm, the first Internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.

The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988, was a malicious self-replicating computer program that affected VAX computers and SUN-3 workstations running the 4.2 and 4.3 Berkeley UNIX code. It is one of the oldest computer worms distributed via the Internet, and the first to gain significant mainstream media attention. The incident resulted in the first felony conviction in the US under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It was written by Robert Tappan Morris, a graduate student at Cornell University, and launched on 8:30 p.m. November 2, 1988, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology network.