Happy Birthday to the Computer Virus, Celebrating 20 Years of Pure Maliciousness
This post was published 2 years 3 months 26 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.This month in 1982 the world was graced with the first spreadable computer virus. It was designed to attack Apple II computers and spread via infected floppy disks. Created by Rich Skrenta who was a 15-year-old high school student from Pittsburgh.
The payload of Elk Cloner was largely benign, harking back to an earlier more innocent age before today’s generation of Trojans that turn compromised PCs into clients on zombie networks controlled for profit-motivated cybercrooks. Elk Cloner’s payload was merely a verse or two of poetry. Mostly harmless. Although the malware did set the theme for a stream of annoying pieces of malware which popped up on the screens of Apple II, BBC Micro and, later, early PC users’ screens.
“Back then it was just a prank. A bit of fun. Today’s malware is frequently malevolent and coded by criminals and/or hackers who are intent on extracting money from – as well as destroying the data of – innocent computer users and the organisations they work for,” said Phil Higgins, a senior partner with security integrator Brookcourt Solutions. “An example of this is the MPack tool kit which is being used by criminals to infect legitimate websites and then deliver a crimeware payload to unsuspecting visitors.”
Wouldn’t it be 25 years? Or was this hacked too?
First virus?
What about Darwin and Creeper in year 1962? Or “Pervadin animal”?
But yea, Elk Cloner was first virus for Apple II computers… But wasnt the year 1981?
And thanks to vista….many more!
Back then because Apple had a decent market share, they had viri written for their boxes, too. Now, Apple touts better security simply because their lack of market share makes their boxes moot for virus writers.
The irony, though, is that this thing was written for Apple’s stuff, which no longer is even considered worth virus writers’ time.