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20 Years of Computer Viruses

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the spreading-the-news dept.

Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that twenty years ago today (19 January 1986), the first computer virus, Brain, was discovered. By modern standards, this was a minor virus, and it spread by floppy disks, which is a far cry from the network-aware worms of today. Still, though, it was the first noted virus, and we've had twenty years of pain and annoyance from it and its successors. Happy birthday, Brain, you and all your little virus friends - just know we're doing our damndest to keep you from having more."

14 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Sigh... by ryanr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not the first virus. It's the first PC virus, meaning IBM PC running DOS.

    1. Re:Sigh... by aarku · · Score: 4, Informative

      Indeed. At least back to 1981 on the Apple II. Or "Elk Cloner" in 1982 according to wikipedia.

  2. first PC virus by dotpavan · · Score: 5, Informative
    quoting wikipedia: "A program called "Elk Cloner" is credited with being the first computer virus to appear "in the wild" -- that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created. Written in 1982 by Rich Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread by floppy disk."

    And, "The first PC virus was a boot sector virus called (c)Brain, created in 1986 by two brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, operating out of Lahore, Pakistan. The brothers reportedly created the virus to deter pirated copies of software they had written."

    1. Re:first PC virus by glowworm · · Score: 5, Informative

      And... I believe the first network aware self propogating worm was the Morris worm (1998/11/02) meant to gague the size of the internet.

      I believe the third worm and the first on-purpose malicious network worm was Wank from October 1989. It attacked VAX machines running on DECNet, changing passwords and lol phoning all the people who had accounts to annoy them ;). Cert Wank Advisory CA-1989-04 ;)

      Earlier in 1988 there was the hi.com worm, but that was just a zombie. It was meant to send a Merry Christmas message to all infected users on 25 December 1988 ;)


      W O R M A G A I N S T N U C L E A R K I L L E R S
      Your System Has Been Officially WANKed
      You talk of times of peace for all, and then prepare for war.

      Someone might know of an earlier malicious network aware worm, but this is the first one I know of.

      --
      Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
    2. Re:first PC virus by earthbound+kid · · Score: 3, Informative

      You have a typo: Morris was 1988, not 1998. It's obvious from the rest of your post though.

  3. Re:Message in the virus? by dotpavan · · Score: 5, Informative

    people did take them seriously, so seriously that they were interviewed by TIME, for more story, over to this link, but alas I think it was short-lived.. now they are kinda reduced to ISP and stuff

  4. Worm verses Virus by Beave · · Score: 5, Informative

    It uses to be that "worm" != "virus". Now days, it seems, many people call just about everything a "virus", when in fact, the "more proper definition" would be worm. Or, maybe I'm just being an old fart about this. It's pretty simple. If it is a _standalone_ program meant to infect machines, then it would be considered a "worm". If the malicous program where to "infect" other programs (say - via .exe, .com infector or MBR), it's a "virus". That is, a "virus" will actually "attach" itself to a existing program (old com/exe infectors for eaxmple) or load themselves into the MBR/boot records. Then again, I see very obvious "trojans" get called "viruses!!!" all the time as well. Oh well :)

  5. Re:No such thing as "computer" virus by bugg · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't think that's true, many old viruses used to operate mainly in the boot sector, and as such were infecting and spreading at a level beneath the OS (and beneath filesystems, for that)

    I don't care what kind of disk you're booting, it has an MBR, and there might be a virus in it...

    --
    -bugg
  6. Scientific American by michaelmalak · · Score: 4, Informative
    This 1988 bibliography on viruses has many pre-1986 references, most notably from the popular press:
    • Dewdney, A. K.; Computer Recreations - In the game called Core War hostile programs engage in a battle of bits; Scientific American; Mar 1984.
    • Dewdney, A. K.; Computer Recreations - A Core War bestiary of viruses, worms and other threats to computer memories; Scientific American; Mar 1985.
    I've always believed that were it not for these Scientific American articles, it would have taken a lot longer for viruses to become prevalent. These articles piqued the interest of computer users (then synonymous with programmers) everywhere. For example, here's a 1994 comp.sys.apple2 post I just found of someone who was seduced by the articles into writing viruses.
  7. Re:This is year 12 of me using Linux by audacity242 · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is year 10 of me using Windows virus free.

    Plus 4 years of DOS before that.

  8. PC virus mentioned in 1984/85 by Terje+Mathisen · · Score: 3, Informative

    I read the first article about the theoretical possibility of a PC virus in either 1984 or '85, at this time most people scoffed at it, simply refusing to believe it was possible.

    Anyway, having written quite a bit of asm code, I had no problems accepting the possibility, so for fun I decided to write a sort of vaccine:

    Simply a small program that took a digitial signature of every executable piece of code (boot blocks, .com/.exe etc) and saved this to a text file on a bootable floppy, which was then marked read-only.

    Afterwards I could simply put in this floppy and reboot, whereupon the same program would compare the current signatures with those saved on the floppy.

    The problem was to keep the original list updated each time I wrote a new program. :-(

    Terje

    --
    "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
  9. Re:Message in the virus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    These two Brothers who created this virus are now millionries, have built Pakistan's largest ISP Brain Net and are also WLL service providers. See.. http://brain.net.pk/

  10. No, THIS is the first computer virus. by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is the first computer virus. From 1975. With source code.

  11. Worms were there first by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Informative

    it spread by floppy disks, which is a far cry from the network-aware worms of today.

    "The first implementation of a worm was by two researchers at Xerox PARC in 1978. The authors, John Shoch and Jon Hupp, originally designed the worm to find idle processors on the network and assign them tasks, sharing the processing and so improving the whole network efficiency."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm

    Not only was it a "network aware" worm, but also a rootkit and a crude "grid" implementation.

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.