The computer virus turns 25 this year

[zyberboy]

The computer virus turns 25 years old this year. It's been a rocky quarter-century, but according to Richard Ford and Eugene Spafford, two computer scientists writing in this week's issue of the journal Science, viruses can look forward to a long, fruitful life. The researchers say that in today's hyper-connected world, when everything's got a chip in it and is running software, stopping malware is basically an impossible task. (Their article is not online.)

The computer virus conception story begins in 1981, when a tech-savvy 9th grader named Richard Skrenta got an Apple II for Christmas. Over the following few months he began cooking up ways to trick his friends using the machine. "I had been playing jokes on schoolmates by altering copies of pirated games to self-destruct after a number of plays," Skrenta once told the tech news site Security Focus. "I'd give out a new game, they'd get hooked, but then the game would stop working with a snickering comment from me on the screen."

When his friends realized his tricky ways, they banned Skrenta from their machines. And that's when he had an epiphany: He could put his code on the school's computer, and rig it to copy itself onto floppy disks that students used on the system. Thus was born Elk Cloner, the world's first computer virus to spread in the wild. The virus didn't do much damage; it infected the Apple II's OS and copied itself to other floppies, and every so often would display a tittering message on the screen:

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes it's Cloner!

It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too
Send in the Cloner!

source
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007...day/index.html

[BBThumbHealer]

Happy Bday Virus

[NucleusKore]

Imagine! 9th grader!

[anandk]

maybe a special virus shud be released to celebrate this occasion...

[fun2sh]

baap re! a ninth grader created that. i dont know from where he learned all that. its not taught in school. is it?

[blackpearl]

Wow!! silver jubilee!!

[Josan]

wow!dearest virus a very Happy Birthday ,
Wow !!!!!!25 long years of distruction thats great ,alll i can say is that ur Great

[praka123]

Miss u virus-am still using Linux may be worms someday(in a decade may be )

[solomon_paulraj]

long live.. the virus community... many more happy returns of the day computer virus...

[~Phenom~]

Originally Posted by praka123

Miss u virus-am still using Linux may be worms someday(in a decade may be )

lol same here...

[mustang]

The computer virus turns 25 years old this year,then what it is not a end,it also completes 100,200,300 years

[codred]

its not surprising.... silver jubilee for a virus... HAPPY BDAY viral dude.

i guess u must have heard about Code Red virus [it was dubbed as "The virus that will not die"]. it had created a global panic for months in early 2001. The fast-moving Code Red computer worm kept dodging the high-tech bullets meant to kill it. Among the big victims: FedEx, AT&T and Microsoft — which for months had urged customers to install its patch against this deadly worm. As many as 800,000 computers worldwide had been hit, causing business disruptions and Internet slowdowns. Code Red had become the biggest ever Internet threat in those days.

The Code Red worm had cost an estimated $1.2 billion in damage to networks in many research organizations. The cost of cleanup, monitoring and checking systems for the self-propagating worm, which had infected about 360,000 servers, was $740 million in 2001.

and soon after, CodeRed's sibling "Code Red II" was born in mid-july 2001.
As the "Code Red II" virus hit more computer networks and continued spreading overseas. The FBI thought the worm was launched by sophisticated international hackers — not teenage amateurs. According to security experts and federal law enforcement officials, the FBI did not believe so-called "script kiddies" were behind the Code Red attacks that have struck 400,000 to 800,000 server computers since mid-July 2001.

and even today the Code Red duo is said to be "herbernating" somehere in scores of machines n servers. it was programmed to go underground for many years after being detected. the threat from CodeRed is still looming large..........

[zyberboy]

^^nice read.......and u r the fan of that virus...lol

[ax3]

ya ....... a new 1 should b release ..... 2 wipe EVERY 1 pc on this planet .....


call it DOOMSDAY or JUDGEMENT DAY ............. WOW ............

[::cyborg::]