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.

I think Walker got there first.

[Anonymous Coward]

In many ways John Walker's "Animal" program [fourmilab.ch] probably qualifies as the first virus, and it dates back to the mid seventies.

Wrong anniversary, this is their 21st.

[plover]

I remember an article in Scientific American that spoke to a young man named Richard Skrenta, who wrote an Apple ][ virus in 1982. I remember him bemoaning the fact that "it got onto his disks, the math teacher's disks and all his friends disks."

Sorry, but Fred Cohen was not the first virus writer.

These viruses can already drink, and they can probably vote on a Diebold machine. They may already have...

Worms are TWENTY-FIVE years old...

[alispguru]

Don't know about viruses, but the first computer worms (as in programs that dynamically spread themselves across networks) were created at Xerox PARC in 1978. See here [xerox.com] (scroll down to "1978") or here [greyowltutor.com] for details.

Other Platforms?

[Anonymous Coward]

This BBC article was actually pretty useless. The PC platform was not the dominant platform for the early period of viruses. No mention whatsoever of the Amiga, Atari ST and any other platforms - in Europe at least the first large-scale spread of viruses was on the Amiga and ST, due to the huge amounts of floppy disks being exchanged. At the time, the PC barely had a look in to home computing.

Not a very well researched article, IMHO.

Re:Simple:

[donutello]

Console don't get viruses because it's (virtually) impossible by design to make any permanent effects. All Nintendo systems are immune because the system doesn't depend on writable media. Worst that could happen is that your memory card gets fried. But that doesn't affect any of your games or the system itself.

I believe that's not true for the XBox which actually has a HD and I believe you can update your XBox via XBox Live.

Re:Wrong anniversary, this is their 21st.

[blamanj]

Indeed at least two [cknow.com] sites [factmonster.com] document the Apple viruses in 1981. In addition, they were discussed in theory as early as 1949, and appeared in science fiction as least by 1975 in John Brunner's great Shockwave Rider [amazon.com], which was the inspiration for Robert Morris' famous Internet worm [mit.edu].

technically...

[ShadowRage]

viruses are actually pretty awseome considering what some of them do, the ingeniousness behind them is prolly why they called them "marvelous"

it also keeps competent software makers on their toes to make a more secure and virus free system, most virii dwell on security holes and architecture plagues. (eg, everything windows has to offer)
there's one virus that wins them all, it's that one that has polymorphic code, meaning it can execute on any system on a specific architecture..
a virus like that could be handy because it could help bridge the gap between most operating systems in compatibility..

sometimes with the bad you get the good..
example, when the soviets launched sputnik, this was a "bad" thing for americans, 2 reasons, nuclear weapons being launched from space, and ego.

so, in light of that, (D)ARPA was formed, then came the arpanet, which led to the internet.

so good does come out of seemingly bad events.
virus writing can be considered an art in some cases, considering... especially if someone found out how to make one that could attack any linux system no matter what. now that would be scary, but would show skill.