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.

Comments

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.

Scary

[metlin]

Whats scary is that this article is right next after one that says Microsoft Moving Into Chip Design. 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.

Aren't they at least 21?

[xanthines-R-yummy]

wasn't the first boot sector virus written around 1982 on what was then called the Nova system? i believe it infected the track 0 of the diablo disk drives.

Anyone old enough to know what I'm talking about?

Viruses signal the organic nature of the net

[heironymouscoward]

Put enough people into a system and it starts to behave like an organic system rather than individuals each doing their thing.

Viruses, worms, trojans are way past the point of being expressions of individualistic derangement.

They represent the nasty side of the biology of the Net: the fact that any simulated or real ecosystem produces more parasites than non-parasites, and that non-parasites have to spend a significant amount of energy fighting off the bugs.

Two decades is not significant in itself, but it should be a stark warning that viruses are not going to go away, that the Net is turning "wild", and that we need something other than daily antivirus updates to keep our systems safe.

XBox viruses?

[3Suns]

Hmm, I just thought of something when looking at the top 2 stories... Why aren't there any XBox viruses? It seems like a prime target for worms, with internet connectivity via XBox Live, a well-published interface for firmware hacking via software, a homogenous monoculture of both hardware and software, not to mention probably dozens of well-known vulnerabilities from its use of Windows and DirectX alone. Is there anything special about the XBox that is protecting it more than PCs from a plague of viruses?

Journalists

[Doomrat]

"there are almost 60,000 viruses in existence"

Why do journalists insist on sticking poorly researched figures in a writeup? Do they think that this somehow makes it all seem more credible? This number is clearly just a count from a virus checker's definition file summary. I bet they failed to include or even comprehend the fact that viruses are not a Windows only thing - heck, game instructions for the Amiga would insist that you hard booted your machine to get rid of potentially evil RAM content type stuff.