Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Worms Security

20 Years of Computer Viruses 278

Posted by CowboyNeal from the spreading-the-news dept.
Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that twenty years ago today (19 January 1986), the first computer virus, Brain, was discovered. By modern standards, this was a minor virus, and it spread by floppy disks, which is a far cry from the network-aware worms of today. Still, though, it was the first noted virus, and we've had twenty years of pain and annoyance from it and its successors. Happy birthday, Brain, you and all your little virus friends - just know we're doing our damndest to keep you from having more."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

20 Years of Computer Viruses More

20 Years of Computer Viruses

Comments Filter:

  • Yay for viruses! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jailbrekr ( 73837 ) <jailbrekr@digitaladdiction.net> on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:32AM (#14516605) Homepage
    Thanks to the Blaster virus, I'm getting married in 2 days. See, viruses aren't all bad.

  • Sigh... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ryanr ( 30917 ) * <ryan@thievco.com> on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:33AM (#14516608) Homepage Journal
    Not the first virus. It's the first PC virus, meaning IBM PC running DOS.

  • yes but (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...Did it run on linux..?

  • Message in the virus? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:34AM (#14516618)
    Welcome to the Dungeon
    (c) 1986 Basit & Amjad (pvt) Ltd.
    BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES
    730 NIZAB BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN
    LAHORE-PAKISTAN
    PHONE :430791,443248,280530.
    Beware of this VIRUS....
    Contact us for vaccination.

    I wonder if anyone ever tried to look up these guys. Kind of blatent calling card if you ask me.
  • Requiring the user to execute an email attachment is to spreading invisibly via floppy disk

    as

    a) Slashdot is to news
    b) Bush is to Clinton
    c) Moth is to butterfly
    d) Suicide is to STD

  • first PC virus (Score:5, Informative)

    by dotpavan ( 829804 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:36AM (#14516629) Homepage
    quoting wikipedia: "A program called "Elk Cloner" is credited with being the first computer virus to appear "in the wild" -- that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created. Written in 1982 by Rich Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread by floppy disk."

    And, "The first PC virus was a boot sector virus called (c)Brain, created in 1986 by two brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, operating out of Lahore, Pakistan. The brothers reportedly created the virus to deter pirated copies of software they had written."

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:39AM (#14516642)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:first PC virus (Score:5, Funny)

      by eweu ( 213081 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:49AM (#14516691)
      See? Apples have always had innovations years before PCs.

      The only computer virus I've ever had was the WDEF virus. Disinfectant caught it right away. That was 1992, so I guess I'm too smug.
      • eweu said:

        Disinfectant caught it right away. That was 1992, so I guess I'm too smug.

        *sigh* I must have come to the party too late. By the time I started really using the Internet (late '92 or early '93) Disinfectant was already up to date on everything out there, so I have never had a Mac infected by a virus.

        Disinfectant was a nice peice of software...fast, free, small memory footprint, small size... Of course, it was probably pretty easy to keep up to date since it only had 40 or so viruses to keep tra

      • Given that WDEF started in 1989 and you still caught it in 1992, I would agree that yes, you are too smug. ;-)

    • Re:first PC virus (Score:5, Informative)

      by glowworm ( 880177 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:03AM (#14516756) Journal
      And... I believe the first network aware self propogating worm was the Morris worm [wikipedia.org] (1998/11/02) meant to gague the size of the internet.

      I believe the third worm and the first on-purpose malicious network worm was Wank from October 1989. It attacked VAX machines running on DECNet, changing passwords and lol phoning all the people who had accounts to annoy them ;). Cert Wank Advisory CA-1989-04 [cert.org] ;)

      Earlier in 1988 there was the hi.com worm, but that was just a zombie. It was meant to send a Merry Christmas message to all infected users on 25 December 1988 ;)


      W O R M A G A I N S T N U C L E A R K I L L E R S
      Your System Has Been Officially WANKed
      You talk of times of peace for all, and then prepare for war.

      Someone might know of an earlier malicious network aware worm, but this is the first one I know of.

      • Re:first PC virus (Score:4, Informative)

        by earthbound kid ( 859282 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:25AM (#14516860) Homepage
        You have a typo: Morris was 1988, not 1998. It's obvious from the rest of your post though.

      • Re:first PC virus (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hughk ( 248126 )
        No, the first worm was earlier, but it stayed inside one company's very large internal DECnet network. It was a networking mapping script that went wrong on DEC's Easynet in the early eighties that was supposed to collect adjacency information and then execute itself on any compatible adjacent nodes. I guess you can see the problem there (it never checked in case it had already visited a node).

        The employee concerned was never caught although he sometimes would admit to it a loong time later.

    • so they should file a patent on this. Think about the royalties they could take in

  • Happy Birthday, Virus! (Score:5, Funny)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:38AM (#14516638)
    I LOVE YOU

  • Makes you wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dartarrow ( 930250 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:39AM (#14516640) Homepage
    ... how Quantum Viruses would be.
    • ... why don't you just imagine a beowulf cluster of them while you're at it?
    • .... how Quantum Viruses would be.

      Well, they might be bad, but you would never really know where they were and where they are going :)

      I got my first and last virus in 1994 from a roommate in college who brought me the "Monkey" virus from a computer lab on a floppy disk. I also have not used Microsoft based operating systems that much since that date.

      I guess I'm lucky.

    • Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Funny)

      by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @10:27AM (#14518968)
      Makes you wonder how Quantum Viruses would be.

      The good news is that you won't get infected until you observe the virus.

      The bad news is that if you do observe the virus, you have a 50/50 chance of a dead cat inside your computer.

  • okay! (Score:3, Funny)

    by maxrate ( 886773 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:43AM (#14516659)
    Time to whip out the old 5 1/4" floppies!!!!!!

  • Good luck (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:44AM (#14516661)
    "Happy birthday, Brain, you and all your little virus friends - just know we're doing our damndest to keep you from having more."

    Good luck. You'll need it, 'cause selection pressure tends to win.

  • Oh, really... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:45AM (#14516671)
    ... it spread by floppy disks, which is a far cry from the network-aware worms of today.

    While a network virus could reach around the globe in a matter of seconds, floppy disk viruses were just as bad before networks and CDs became common. Not only did you have to scan your own hard drive, but each and every floppy disk if you didn't know where the virus came from. You often had to practice "safe computing" by asking if the floppy disk was scanned before you use it on your own machine.
    • And had to make sure you didn't put a floppy disk in the drive while booting up, or make sure to configure the BIOS to not boot off the floppy. I used to help maintain a highschool computer lab back in those days, and man, lots of users with poor habits made viruses spread through the lab pretty quickly.

    • Re:Oh, really... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by misleb ( 129952 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:56AM (#14516970)
      What was cool about the floppy born virus is that it is easy for collectors to store. I knew I guy who had a big box full of infected floppies. Hundreds of em'. All labeled with the virus that was on them. Some had multiple viruses. Neat stuff.

      -matthew
           

      • What was cool about the floppy born virus is that it is easy for collectors to store. I knew I guy who had a big box full of infected floppies. Hundreds of em'. All labeled with the virus that was on them. Some had multiple viruses. Neat stuff.

        The computer store I worked at in the early 90's had an extensive collection that we used to test AV programs and to train techs on virus detection and removal. We kept 'em in a double locked file cabinet, and only me and the other senior tech each had one key, and

    • I had one virus (monkey-d or something) that would hide in memory such that the virus scan couldn't find it, though a scan would clean a floppy. As a result, if I found a disk with the virus, I had to clean it then immediately reboot, since even "dir"ing the disk would reinfect it.
  • For 20 years of occasionally losing sleep and mucho work time to dealing with the various virii that have popped up on your shoddily-secured operating system. I'm certain we're in for at least 20 more years while we await your demise. It'll be slow in coming but sure.

    • You know.. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bmajik ( 96670 )
      I've owned machines running DOS 5.0, Windows 3.0, 3.1, OS/2 2.1, OS/2 2.11, Windows 2k Server, Windows XP, Solaris 2.4, Solaris 2.5, Solaris 2.5.1, Solaris 2.6, IRIX 6.2, IRIX 6.5, NeXTSTEP 2.x, NeXTStep 3.3, OpenStep 4.2, OpenBSD 2.{5,6,7,8}, Linux TAMU, Slackware 1.0 (and a bunch of subsequent versions).

      Do you know what?

      I have never had a virus of any kind on any of those machines.

      The best anti-virus protection is inbetween your ears.

      Ironically, my IRIX machine was remote rooted, and i had a DOS successfu

  • perfect business model (Score:5, Insightful)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:51AM (#14516703) Homepage Journal
    create a crisis and provide means of solving the crisis for a nice fee.

      Welcome to the Dungeon
      (c) 1986 Basit & Amjad (pvt) Ltd.
      BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES
      730 NIZAB BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN
      LAHORE-PAKISTAN
      PHONE :430791,443248,280530.
      Beware of this VIRUS....
      Contact us for vaccination    ............ $#@%$@!!

    can we be sure the same thing isn't happening today at say... symantec?
    • can we be sure the same thing isn't happening today at say... symantec?

      The first word macro virus came from Microsoft.

    • I'd day it's pretty likely not (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:12AM (#14516797)
      Main reason being there's no real need. There's enough assholes out there betweek immature assholes looking to cause trouble and greedy assholes looking to use systems for spam and such that there's just no lack of viruses.

      Remember that if they were doing such a thing they'd face extreme criminal charges when caught, and make no mistake, they would be caught. There's a lot of anti-virus companies out there, and a lot of security researchers. Sooner or later, I'd be diacovered they were the source and then they'd be fucked.

      You don't take risks like that if there's no reason. Ten viruses per year being released would be plenty to ensure your continued existance, since it only takes one nasty one to remind people your software is valuable. Given the thousands that are released, there's no reason to put yourself at risk making more.
    • Normally I would have used my mod points to mod you down as flamebait, but instead I think I'll reply.

      I happen to work for Symantec. I think we create great products. Yes, they have bugs. Sometimes they're bad bugs. Guess what - every piece of software installed on your PC has bugs. We fix them very quickly when it happens. We do a thing called "Rapid Response" and we turn around a patch as quickly as humanly possible. I've participated in one "Rapid Response", so yes, I do know what I'm talking abou
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • No one seriously believes Symantec is capable of making virusses. Not competent enough to even build a virusscanner that doesn't rely on internet explorer for its user interface (except, interestingly enough, the corporate edition, which isn't sold to noobs; not that it's perfect, it's a bitch to setup and maintain in just the way you want). And what's with the skins? You've got your priorities right there, make it look pretty and screw up user's expectations of the user interface.

        I've tried many virusscann

      • Re:perfect business model (Score:3, Informative)

        by Inda ( 580031 )
        No, these days you create rubbish products and live off your brand name.

        I uninstalled your anti-virus software many moons ago. One day, many moons later, I saw network traffic when there should have been none. This traffic (2mb an hour - nearly 1.5gb a month) was coming from one of your updating applications that had not been uninstalled properly. Thanks for that. Thanks for the wasted time and the wasted bandwidth.

        I could go on about the hours your software takes to scan my little hard drive. But I won't.

        I

  • 20 years of Windows, too! (Score:5, Funny)

    by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:54AM (#14516717)
    Windows is also 20 years old, give or take a couple of months [wikipedia.org].

    Laugh, it's a joke. Windows wasn't even natively network aware until 10 years later :)

  • Brian? (Score:3, Funny)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMspamgoeshere.calum.org> on Friday January 20, 2006 @12:58AM (#14516738) Homepage
    "No, I'm Brian, and so's my wife!"

  • I recall... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Velox_SwiftFox ( 57902 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:01AM (#14516751)
    When one media pundit was being subjected to derision because of his outlandish idea that viruses might be spread by email.
    • That was what Microsoft called the first Word macro virus.
    • Ah the olden days. Good times.

  • 20 years! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:06AM (#14516774)
    Coincidently, it was twenty years ago today that my first sexually transmiteed virus, Herpes, was discovered. Compared to today's potential bird flu, its a minor virus, and like Brain, it spread by my "floppy disk" (as I like to call it). Still, though, it was my first noted virus, and I've had twenty years of pain and annoyance from it and its many successors. Happy birthday, Herpes, you and all your little virus friends - just know I'm doing my damndest to keep myself from having more.

    • Re:20 years! (Score:2, Funny)

      by syzler ( 748241 )
      Coincidently, it was twenty years ago today that my first sexually transmiteed virus, Herpes, was discovered. Compared to today's potential bird flu, its a minor virus, and like Brain, it spread by my "floppy disk" (as I like to call it).
       
      But don't you have to upgrade to a hard drive in order to transmit it?
  • there are only OS viruses. this is an important distinction in modern times when the term "computer virus" is used when 99.999999*% of the time the correct term would be "Microsoft Windows virus". more generally it promotes a misunderstanding to the public that viruses are a feature of computers themselves rather than particular computer configurations.

    *recurring decimals not shown

    • Re:No such thing as "computer" virus (Score:4, Informative)

      by bugg ( 65930 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:15AM (#14516818) Homepage
      I don't think that's true, many old viruses used to operate mainly in the boot sector, and as such were infecting and spreading at a level beneath the OS (and beneath filesystems, for that)

      I don't care what kind of disk you're booting, it has an MBR, and there might be a virus in it...
    • nope. most older viruses were computer viruses, taking advantage of disk boot sectors and such. they were aware of the OS as far as finding thier next target but it wasn't vulnerable operating systems which made them work.
    • There were NO virii for MacOS 6/7/8/9. There were no Mac A/V products for those platforms.

      I wouldn't be surprised if MacOS had a disproportionately large # of virii written for it, compared to its market share. And they were always nasty to get rid of, IME.

      • me: ...in modern times...

        you: ...virii for MacOS 6...

        what part of 1988 do you consider "modern"? I know it's a vague description but when you were writing your comment and realised you couldn't put Mac OS X in your list, didn't you think that might be my point?

        and just because security can never be perfect doesn't mean one imperfect OS is just as acceptable as any other imperfect OS.

        MS needs to sort out its security. I hope MS's next OS isn't as much of a joke on release as XP. I won't use it but another Bl

  • Worm verses Virus (Score:5, Informative)

    by Beave ( 519067 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:07AM (#14516780) Homepage
    It uses to be that "worm" != "virus". Now days, it seems, many people call just about everything a "virus", when in fact, the "more proper definition" would be worm. Or, maybe I'm just being an old fart about this. It's pretty simple. If it is a _standalone_ program meant to infect machines, then it would be considered a "worm". If the malicous program where to "infect" other programs (say - via .exe, .com infector or MBR), it's a "virus". That is, a "virus" will actually "attach" itself to a existing program (old com/exe infectors for eaxmple) or load themselves into the MBR/boot records. Then again, I see very obvious "trojans" get called "viruses!!!" all the time as well. Oh well :)
    • The issue is confused because modern malware often incorporates virus and worm techniques into one svelt and evil package.
    • Actually, this has been true from the early days. When I was a teenager in the mid 1980s, I didn't understand the difference between worms, viruses, and trojans and most people just called them all viruses.

    • Re:Worm verses Virus (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jaxu ( 904450 )
      If you start being picky over "worm" and "virus" naming, you should also use "trojan horse" instead of "trojans"...

      Because the "trojans" are those dump users who open and run every attachment the can get a hold on!
  • I never encountered Brain (the virus, dammit!). The first (and only!) virus I've had infecting one of my computers was the Ripper [nai.com] virus. Damned annoying, especially being unaware of it for probably a year or more, and this during the time of zipping files across multiple (I think our record was 17 or so) floppy disks. At least one disk out of a set would always be "dead". Made it really annoying to share doom^h^h^h^h ultima7^h^h^h^h^h^h^h data with friends. Ah, the good ol' days. I did finally get rid

  • Gee, Brain. What do you want to do tonight? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bimkins ( 242641 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:14AM (#14516814)
    The same thing we do every night, Pinky, [symantec.com] try to infect the world!

  • Scientific American (Score:5, Informative)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Friday January 20, 2006 @01:19AM (#14516838) Homepage
    This 1988 bibliography on viruses [textfiles.com] has many pre-1986 references, most notably from the popular press:
    • Dewdney, A. K.; Computer Recreations - In the game called Core War hostile programs engage in a battle of bits; Scientific American; Mar 1984.
    • Dewdney, A. K.; Computer Recreations - A Core War bestiary of viruses, worms and other threats to computer memories; Scientific American; Mar 1985.
    I've always believed that were it not for these Scientific American articles, it would have taken a lot longer for viruses to become prevalent. These articles piqued the interest of computer users (then synonymous with programmers) everywhere. For example, here's a 1994 comp.sys.apple2 post [google.com] I just found of someone who was seduced by the articles into writing viruses.
    • Oh, they were a blast alright. I never wrote anything with wormlike tendencies, but I still remember the first time I figured out (figured out, not copied from an article/program/bbs) how to write self-replicating code. Very gnifty and, while simple to copy, a bit of a PITA to deduce. Then again, I was about 12 at the time... which also means that I never had any of it on a networked machine. Not that it would have mattered - it wouldn't infect other systems, just produce copies of itself upon request,

  • Common denominator (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [todhsals.nnamredyps]> on Friday January 20, 2006 @02:12AM (#14517037) Homepage Journal
    Macro Viruses, e-mails, Melissa, Blaster... what do they have in common, kids?

    "Microsoft products!"

    Well done, kids! You get an extra point today!
  • There were Apple ][ Viruses (Viri?) out before that.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk_Cloner/ [wikipedia.org] e.g.

  • It's just amazing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @02:49AM (#14517159) Journal
    I'm upgrading my personal mailserver from RedHat 7.2 (now no longer supported by Progeny, alas) tonight to CentOS 4.2. For about 1/2 hour, my new mail server's antivirus wasn't set up, even though email service was on.

    I was SHOCKED at how many viruses came in - like 40, more than 1 per minute! That means that this mail server was getting some 1,500 crap emails for me every day.

    Unbelievable...

    I've just gotten used to never seeing viruses in my email - it's an incredible crapflood of this stuff out there.

  • My First Virus (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Vskye ( 9079 )
    My first virus came off a "commercial" 5.25" floppy that I paided for. (go figure!) This was back in the late 1980's or early 1990's I believe. Sucked big time. ;)

    Dana

  • PC virus mentioned in 1984/85 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Terje Mathisen ( 128806 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @03:10AM (#14517212)
    I read the first article about the theoretical possibility of a PC virus in either 1984 or '85, at this time most people scoffed at it, simply refusing to believe it was possible.

    Anyway, having written quite a bit of asm code, I had no problems accepting the possibility, so for fun I decided to write a sort of vaccine:

    Simply a small program that took a digitial signature of every executable piece of code (boot blocks, .com/.exe etc) and saved this to a text file on a bootable floppy, which was then marked read-only.

    Afterwards I could simply put in this floppy and reboot, whereupon the same program would compare the current signatures with those saved on the floppy.

    The problem was to keep the original list updated each time I wrote a new program. :-(

    Terje
    • tripwire. I remember a PC project at a bank that used it to check the system daily.

      Also remember the times when it was universally accepted that a virus could only spread via bootblocks and programs, and not via datafiles. Datafiles were not code so they never could get executed.

      This was first defeated by our friends at M$ who decided it was a good idea to have a macrolanguage in wordprocessor documents.
      OK, we had to adjust the abovementioned truth only a little bit, because such a document really is a pr

  • No, THIS is the first computer virus. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @03:50AM (#14517384) Homepage
    This is the first computer virus. [fourmilab.ch] From 1975. With source code.

  • I remember... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lucm ( 889690 )
    ... when some of the virus were funny, like this one that was playing the "Hitchcock Presents" theme once in a while. Or that other one that was beeping each time the Enter key was pressed. This was a time where a TSR was not some obnoxious prick trying to sell you phony mortgage plans.

    Nowadays the virus are mostly mail-related, so you get annoyed by other people's virus all the time. Sad.

  • SCA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20, 2006 @03:56AM (#14517413)
    And theres me thinking the SCA bootblock virus from the SCA in 87 was a trendsetter, but obviously beaten by the apple II stuff. It certainly was a nice piece of code for 4k, funky scrolling text on a red bar set on a black background with the words "Something wonderful has happened" fading up and the usual bootloader. I remember the first time seeing this and someone explaining to me how it replicated, and thinking it was a wind up. Then realizing it was not. The fact they stuffed this into 4k was at the time something of a eye opener and I think help spark the 4k demo scene on the amiga (that and that is the size of the bootsector on a amiga floppy)
    The only real problem with it was commercial games used the 4k bootsector on the floppy to bootstrap their copy protected loaders in, and it used to overwrite these.
    We managed to keep the spread down to a minimum by use of a cunning device known as a "write protect tab". That is once we had virus checked a disk, it was write protected and that was that, since joe average could not afford a hard disk back then and the amiga ran out of its roms anything memory resident just went when the power was pulled...

    • Re:SCA (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Gleng ( 537516 )

      Yes, I was going to post about SCA [wikipedia.org]. I very nearly crapped myself when I first saw the "Something wonderful has happened" message.

      The little bastard used to reside in RAM between warm reboots, and only manifested itself on every 15th boot, so you never knew quite when or where it was going to strike.

      Pretty cool though, in hindsight!

  • One notable omission from the article.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Channard ( 693317 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @05:08AM (#14517629) Journal
    .. is one of the most memorable occurances in virus history. An author wrote a book on viruses - the title of which shall remain nameless - and helpfully included the source code to an actual virus. Which led to dozens of variants appearing virtually overnight. Not the smartest thing to do.

  • Worms were there first (Score:4, Informative)

    by Yvanhoe ( 564877 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @05:45AM (#14517716) Journal
    it spread by floppy disks, which is a far cry from the network-aware worms of today.

    "The first implementation of a worm was by two researchers at Xerox PARC in 1978. The authors, John Shoch and Jon Hupp, originally designed the worm to find idle processors on the network and assign them tasks, sharing the processing and so improving the whole network efficiency."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm [wikipedia.org]

    Not only was it a "network aware" worm, but also a rootkit and a crude "grid" implementation.

  • If it wasn't for the I LOVE YOU virus.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @07:35AM (#14518019)
    I wouldn't have love at all.

    This virus taught me that no warning will stop humans from investigating urequited love notes from their office coworkers.

  • re: 20 Years of Computer Viruses (Score:3, Insightful)

    by micrometer2003 ( 715068 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @08:24AM (#14518193) Homepage
    For 40 years IBM made computers that were pretty robust. The o/s memory and files were in a privileged part of the machine and out of the reach of ANY user. Why can't we do this with pc's?

Slashdot Top Deals

The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.

Close