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20 Years of Virii

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the vaccination-please dept.

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."

3 of 472 comments (clear)

  1. Lame viruses nowadays by CausticWindow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
  2. First PC computer virus by mukund · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    --
    Banu
  3. 20 years? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.