20th Anniversary Of Computer Viruses Commemorated

DoraLives writes "Our good friends at the BBC are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the computer virus. So, viruses are no longer teenagers and are now entering adulthood, as 'there are almost 60,000 viruses in existence and they have gone from being a nuisance to a permanent menace.' What wonders shall there be to come, as these marvelous bits of code continue to grow and multiply?" We ran a recent BBC-authored story on the psychology of virus writers.

Does this mean that they'll ...

[burgburgburg]

finally leave home and get a job?

Their mother and I have put up with enough!

thank you, thank you..

[grub]

We'd like to thank the Academy, the little people and most of all Microsoft for making all this possible. Here's to another 20 good years.

[applause]

Re:"Celebrate"?

[bananaape]

If there weren't viruses to exploit holes, then holes would not get fixed.

If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger... something like that.

The first picture in the article...

[momerath2003]

[e-mail]
[e-mail]
supp [e-mail]

They let it happen; now, they're sending it to your doorstep.

i'm celebrating by

[Savatte]

opening up and unsecuring all the ports on my machine!

Scary

[metlin]

Whats scary is that this article is right next after one that says Microsoft Moving Into Chip Design [slashdot.org]. Is this an omen of some sorts?

Disturbing. Very disturbing.

Re:Scary

[GoofyBoy]

>Is this an omen of some sorts?

Yes, it means that its almost time for another SCO article.

Wait a year.

[missing000]

Well despite the fact that they are quite malicious, some of those viruses are pretty clever.

Think about it. This really is something to celebrate.

Next year the viruses can legally drink.

A drunken virus should be much easier to thwack.

Yeah, old stories (fuzzy feelings)

[danigiri]

A little tear streaked down on my cheek! O' the good ole' days!!!

Nowadays, with the advent of MacOSX (chugging along, thanks) and Linux, these little critters are a thing of the past....

Oh! You mean that they aren't exctinct like the ill-fated dinosaucers!?!? Geez! You mean they only run on MS Windows! You kidding? And to help them procreate and run rampant like in the ancient days, uncle Bill leaves the ports open??? Good 'ncle Bill!

PS: before the hordes of trolls and uninformed bots advocating the alleged security-via-obscurity of MacOSX come in by the legion, please do a google and a slashdot search (yes it even was published here) on PowerPC shell-codes, thank you. After having read and thouroughly understood the ample PDF's, come back and dare to post.
SPOILER: the CS library next to you surely has a publicily available wrinkled PowerPC assembly and arch book for you, go read them.

Re:XBox viruses?

[dknight]

You just HAD to go and give them ideas, didnt you?

Now we're all going to be flooded by worms/viruses from zombie X-boxes.

I'll remember to blame YOU for this.

First infected program called 'VD'

[koa]

Does this strike anyone else how ironic that the first program to be infected with a virus was called 'VD' ?

Re:Celebrate!?

[Satan Dumpling]

Yeah, it was horrible. In college my dumbass roommates got the anti-cmos A virus on my 486, didn't even bother to tell me Win3.1 was acting weird. Lost everything on my 40 meg hard drive. Ever since, I update virus definitions religiously.