20 Years of Virii

DenOfEarth writes "News.com has an article outlining that it was around twenty years ago that a computer security reasearcher coined the term 'virus', and how the things have been running amok. Interestingly enough, when said researcher applyed for research funding to look into a blanket solution to this possible 'virus' problem, he was turned down."

Comments

Lame viruses nowadays

[CausticWindow]

Viruses were much cooler in the early nineties. They didn't spread as wildfire on the internet, but at least they did cool thing as code morphing to foil antivirus programs.

And why is this guy surprised that he doesn't get a grant for a "blanket solution" for viruses? I've got a blanket solution for world hunger and cancer, but I'm not getting any reasearch funding either.

Ah memories

[jawtheshark]

Back in the good old days, I actually let my computer infect on purpose. Just once, yes, it was a bitch to clean. I got however the opportunity to dissect the thing in memory. I do not remember what year it was, but the Tequila virus was spreading like a wildfire. My AV detected the diskette with Tequilla. I had nothing important on the machine, disabled the AV, and staring hunting.

While reading the live memory, I found a message stating "Tequilla and Beer forever" along with an address in Switserland if I recall correctly. Ah, those where the days.... Where viruses were no lame email worms but appended themselves to executables.

Ignored by the NSF?

[Prof. Pi]

From the article:

When he asked for funding from the National Science Foundation three years later to further explore countermeasures, the agency rebuffed him.

A typical problem with getting research funded (or published) is that the gatekeepers, the people who decide what gets funded/published, often choose what is worthy based on their own research interests. One generally has to have established a track record to become a gatekeeper, which means that new ideas are often shut out, while researchers pursue what they think are the current "fashions."

James Gleick (author of Chaos) tells how he was warned by professors that he'd ruin his career wasting his time with this "chaos" nonsense. (Fortunately, he ignored them.)

Re:Lets get this out of the way

[jonathan_ingram]

English isn't Latin -- there's nothing wrong with 'viruses'. There's no reason to out of our way to make English even more irregular than it already is -- particular when 'virii' wouldn't be correct Latin anyway (it would have to be 'virius', not 'virus', for 'virii' to work).

First PC computer virus

[mukund]

Here's the company which created the first computer virus for the PC architecture. Interesting story on this page.

20 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

it was around twenty years ago that a computer security reasearcher coined the term 'virus',

Right... except that in David Gerrold's "When H.A.R.L.I.E. was One" (1972) there's this bit of dialogue :

"Do you remember the VIRUS program?"
"Vaguely. Wasn't it some kind of computer disease or malfunction?"
"Disease is closer. There was a science-fiction writer once who wrote a story about it--but the thing had been around a long time before that. ....etc. etc.

(p. 175, in the 1975 Ballantine paperback reprint: I think I have the 1972 serialization in Galaxy somewhere in a box upstairs, but I can't be arsed to dig it out)

Actually, as described in the succeeding pages, VIRUS was more of a worm (a term coined by John Brunner in "The Shockwave Rider", but you knew that already); but the idea of malware called a virus was around in the early 70s at least.

Fred Cohen - BAH!

[HisMother]

Any time you read an article and see Fred Cohen's name, you can stop reading right there, because you know another so called "journalist" has fallen hook, line, and sinker for this guy's self-aggrandizing line of bullshit. Note that you'll never find an article quoting X as saying Fred Cohen is the father of computer viruses, unless X is Fred Cohen. He's shilling for his security consulting firm, plain and simple. He no more "invented" the computer virus than Al Gore invented the Internet. Please, Slashdot, stop feeding this buttplug's enormous ego!

Sentient Viruses

[tymbow]

I was having a red wine fuelled conversation with some friends on the subject of viruses, worms and Internet security the other day. We were discussing how connectivity has changed the landscape with regards to the impact of viruses, bugs and worms. In the eighties and early nineties there was less connectivity than we have with the modern Internet. The obvious analogue to human viral pathogens and the rise of jet aircraft travel between countries shows how this will only get worse as more devices are connected to Internet and how inoculation and prevention together with secure coding practices (something which has no human virus equivalent at the moment, but who knows where DNS techniques will take us) are becoming mandatory. Should all devices connecting to the network be licensed and approved as cars travelling on roads today must be?

The most interesting point raised was when (if?) we reach the point where viruses are classifiable as sentient beings. Do we then have the right to arbitrarily exterminate them? I could in my stupidest dreams foresee a court case where the latest Internet Explorer 99 bug is arguing for it's continued existence, social welfare and the right to bear children.

Re:Address to spelling mistakes...

[Malc]

You're always going to get people who are looking for any excuse to bring another down.

Then you have those who are seeing a common mistake and pointing it out, either through their own superiority or in an attempt to help others mend their ways.

And there are others who find that basic mistakes diminish the credibility of the text. If the author can't even get the obvious things right, how much of the rest is correct?

I personally get annoyed with people who make common mistakes like using they're, there and their interchangably. Why? It slows my reading down as I pause and translate. Too many mistakes and I just move on... that person's voice unheard by me. Sure, I can understand it if I read it for long enough, but why should I make the effort when the author could've tried a bit harder. Oh, and at the risk of sounding hypocritical, I can't abide laziness either.

Re:not to nitpick

[squiggleslash]

Serious question: Given the existance of microscopic organisms wasn't taken seriously/believed to affect health until the 19th Century, what exactly where the Romans describing when they used the world "virus"?

IIRC, it wouldn't have been medical: the Romans used a health model based upon the "four humours" (blood, mucus, etc) where illnesses that we today would attribute to a virus were then seen in terms of surpluses or shortages within the body of a particular humour. At that point, I don't believe Romans had the technology to see microscopic organisms, let alone associate them with illness and disease.

So what did "virus" mean?

English: a beautifully flexible language.

[fireboy1919]

We make new words out of old ones all the time;
we verb anything;
we create words like "tintinabulation" just because of how they sound, or add words just to have another one that means the same thing;
we create euphemisms for euphemisms;
there is even a word or two with roots that come from two different languages;
we have only a few words to describe the qualities of sounds (mostly only distinguishing good sounds from bad ones), and between the qualities of smells (mostly only distinguishing good smells from bad ones);
we can make gramatically correct sentences that are difficult to parse - in fact, it has been proven that we can make such sentences that are impossible to parse.

All these things are, of course, ridiculous.

Why not add one more thing to the list of ridiculii?