Robert Morris (July 25, 1932 – June 26, 2011) was an American
cryptographer
Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...
and
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
.
His name sometimes appears with a middle initial H that he adopted informally.
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Family and education
Morris was born in
Boston, Massachusetts
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
. His parents were Walter W. Morris, a salesman, and Helen Kelly Morris, a homemaker.
[ He received a ]bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...
in mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
from Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
in 1957 and a master's degree
A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...
in applied mathematics
Applied mathematics is the application of mathematics, mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and Industrial sector, industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a ...
from Harvard in 1958.
He married Anne Farlow, and they had three children together: Robert Tappan Morris
Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating the Morris worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet.
Morris was prosecuted for releasing th ...
(author of the 1988 Morris worm
The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988, is one of the oldest computer worms distributed via the Internet, and the first to gain significant mainstream media attention. It resulted in the first felony conviction in the US under the ...
), Meredith Morris, and Benjamin Morris.
Bell Labs
From 1960 until 1986, Morris was a researcher at Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...
and worked on Multics
Multics ("MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of t ...
and later Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
.
Using the TMG compiler-compiler, Morris, together with McIlroy, developed the early implementation of the PL/I
PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language initially developed by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It has b ...
compiler called EPL for the Multics project. The pair also contributed a version of runoff text-formatting program for Multics.
Morris's contributions to early versions of Unix include the math library, the dc programming language, the program crypt
, and the password encryption scheme used for user authentication. The encryption scheme (invented by Roger Needham
Roger Michael Needham (9 February 1935 – 1 March 2003) was a British computer scientist.
Early life and education
Needham was born in Birmingham, England, the only child of Phyllis Mary, ''née'' Baker (''c''.1904–1976) and Leonard Wil ...
), was based on using a trapdoor function
In theoretical computer science and cryptography, a trapdoor function is a function (mathematics), function that is easy to compute in one direction, yet difficult to compute in the opposite direction (finding its Inverse function, inverse) wit ...
(now called a key derivation function
In cryptography, a key derivation function (KDF) is a cryptographic algorithm that derives one or more secret keys from a secret value such as a master key, a password, or a passphrase using a pseudorandom function (which typically uses a cr ...
) to compute hashes of user password
A password, sometimes called a passcode, is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of password-protected services t ...
s which were stored in the file /etc/passwd
; analogous techniques, relying on different functions, are still in use today.
National Security Agency
In 1986, Morris began work at the National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
(NSA).[ He served as chief scientist of the NSA's National Computer Security Center, where he was involved in the production of the ]Rainbow Series
The Rainbow Series (sometimes known as the Rainbow Books) is a series of computer security standards and guidelines published by the United States government in the 1980s and 1990s. They were originally published by the U.S. Department of Defen ...
of computer security standards, and retired from the NSA in 1994. He once told a reporter that, while at the NSA, he helped the FBI decode encrypted evidence.[
There is a description of Morris in ]Clifford Stoll
Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll (born June 4, 1950) is an American astronomer, author and teacher.
He is best known for his investigation in 1986, while working as a system administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that led to th ...
's book '' The Cuckoo's Egg''.
Many readers of Stoll's book remember Morris for giving Stoll a challenging mathematical puzzle
A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle. There are differe ...
(originally due to John H. Conway) in the course of their discussions on computer security
Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and computer network, n ...
: ''What is the next number in the sequence 1 11 21 1211 111221?'' (known as the look-and-say sequence
In mathematics, the look-and-say sequence is the integer sequence, sequence of integers beginning as follows:
: 1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221, 312211, 13112221, 1113213211, 31131211131221, ... .
To generate a member of the sequence from the previous ...
). Stoll was unaware of the answer to this puzzle at the time and remained unaware when writing ''The Cuckoo's Egg'' and thus did not reveal the answer in his book.
Robert Morris died in Lebanon, New Hampshire
Lebanon ( ) is the only city in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 14,282 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, up from 13,151 at the 2010 United States census, 2010 census. Lebanon is in western New Hampshi ...
.
Quotes
* Rule 1 of cryptanalysis: check for plaintext.
* Never underestimate the attention, risk, money, and time that an opponent will put into reading traffic.
* It is easy to run a secure computer system. You merely have to disconnect all dial-up connections and permit only direct-wired terminals, put the machine and its terminals in a shielded room, and post a guard at the door.
Selected publications
* (with Fred T. Grampp) UNIX Operating System Security, ''AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal'', 63, part 2, #8 (October 1984), pp. 1649–1672.
References
External links
* Dennis Ritchie
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and the Unix operating system and B language with long-time colleague Ken Thompson. Ritchie and Thomp ...
"Dabbling in the Cryptographic World"
tells the story of cryptographic research he performed with Morris and why that research was never published.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, Robert H.
Modern cryptographers
1932 births
2011 deaths
Scientists at Bell Labs
American computer security academics
Harvard University alumni
National Security Agency cryptographers
People from Boston
Multics people
Unix people