The Computer Virus Turns 25 in July

bl8n8r writes "In July of 1982, an infected Apple II propogated the first computer virus onto a 5-1/4" floppy. The virus, which did little more than annoy the user, Elk Cloner, was authored in Pittsburgh by a 15-year-old high school student, Rich Skrenta. The virus replicated by monitoring floppy disk activity and writing itself to the floppy when it was accessed. Skrenta describes the virus as "It was a practical joke combined with a hack. A wonderful hack." Remember, he was a 9th grader when he did this."

Imagine his wealth...

...if he had patented the virus.

Re:Imagine his wealth...

And imagine how secure the computing world would be ... if Microsoft had a monopoly on virus creation.

Script kiddie age?

Is there any information on the average age of people who have written the major viruses of the last couple decades? Has this age gone down over time?

Re:Pretty sad!

My first questions in an interview to hire someone is, "Are you a programmer?" The second question is,"Did you goto school for this?" If they answer "yes" then they don't get the job.

CS Graduates don't goto school. They instantiate a CSStudent (using a StudentFactory class). CSStudent implemnents a functor Notify callback as part of the abstract Student interface. Using the Observer pattern, they call the Attach method of the ConcreteSchool class which implements the School Interface. Then the ConcreteSchool class calls Notify and passes a Notification object containing a ConcreteClass object which the Student stores in a Dictionary class, Knowledge. In the examination Use Case, the Notify is called with a ExamNotification object containing a List of ExamQuestion objects. CSStudent intantiates an Iterator which iterates though the list and uses the Dictionary object's Lookup method to answer each question, calling before calling ExamNotification's Answer method.

After reception of a Graduation, ExamFailure or DrugsBust notification, the CSStudent destructor is called. This in turn calls the Knowledge destructor and the Knowledge Dictionary is deleted.

Answering my own question, sort of

Of the "ten most destructive PC viruses of all time [techweb.com]":

CIH, by Chen Ing Hau, who "attended a university" at the time of release ~1998.
Melissa virus, by David L. Smith, age 31 in 1999
ILOVEYOU, by university student for thesis, 2000
Code Red, author unknown?
SQL Slammer, 2003, by a 21-22 year old
Blaster, 2003, variant by an 18 year old
Sobig, possibly by 30 year old Ruslan Ibragimov?
Bagle, author unknown?
MyDoom, unknown
Sasser, by 17 year old

Not much to go on.

Re:Answering my own question, sort of

Are there viruses named after the other three Ninja Turtles?

Re:Script kiddie age?

I suppose I will be pedantic about this as I don't think we should minimize the creativity. I think of script kiddies as someone who takes existing tool, say some published code and MS Visual studio, and repackages it. They, in fact, just use scripts.

What this kid did was go into the the Apple internals and figure out how to do something himself. In hindsight it was not such a great feat, but is was a feat that was at least somewhat novel.

OTOH, kids have nothing but time on their hands and if the parents and schools don't keep them busy, then they find other ways to stay busy. The more cleaver one can produce some real havoc. What impresses me is the high school kid that does something creative and interesting with his or her free time, instead of being randomly malicious. The really good ones will go out and start applying their skills to the betterment of humanity, but really any bright kid that chooses a path that is not gratuitously destructive is a win in my opinion.

Don't forget the Lehigh Virus

I was at Lehigh when this was released. One of the first self propagating viruses, with a time delay to allow for greater infection, that was actually destructive. It was sort of a non-event to the users there; imagine my surprise when I looked it up years later and it figures prominently in virus history.

Re:Don't forget the Lehigh Virus

One of the first self propagating viruses

Still, sounds like something very harmless. You should see Amiga-related (not AmigaOS related as much of the population used Amiga as game console) viruses, like Saddam. I think orginal Saddam could be proud this piece of horrible software.

Then, with release of AmigaOS 2.04, we had new kind of viruses. They would spread like... er... viruses? They patched all systems calls dealing with resources loading and all your fonts, device drivers, libraries, executables was infected. I still remember Happy New Year 1996 -- it took me two days with no sleep to clean my disk. Anti-virus software that could deal with it was designed by someone who hated people. First, you passed what it should scan. Then, when process started, at every instance of virus it would start FROM THE TOP. And it would say "Oh, you have an virus. It was deleted. Continue?" You HAD to click it to start again. My Libs: directory had over 6500 shared libraries. All infected.

(Yes, I realize it was done to prevent from recursive infection. This should not be the case since all system vectors was checked all the time by the very same program.)

I think this guy was hired to do 'Allow or Cancel' component. :-)

Has this been done before?

I take a snapshot of my sister's desktop, then open it in photoshop and clone all sorts of icon and littering it all over like a mess, then save the file and use it as a desktop background. She comes over to me screaming that her desktop is a mess and she couldn't find anything, and she can't open an icon when she clicks on it, much less highlight it! AHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Not a virus, just a prank but still :D

Re:Has this been done before?

Shouldn't it be your nap time?

Re:Has this been done before?

nope a better one is to put a photo screensaver on a It professionals machine, then have it display only 1 image a BSOD.

The guy was one of the types that always reminded you of his certifications. yet it took us telling him it was a screensaver to stop him from tearing apart his PC.

It was funnier than hell, he stopped chasing us with sharp objects about 4 days later.

Re:Has this been done before?

So how do you screencap a BSOD?

Using an emulator, such as VirtualPC.

Re:Has this been done before?

I had a boss named "Dave" once. I replaced his Windows sound events with snips from 2001: a space oddessey. For instance "I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave".

I miss that job!

The reason why Macs are so much more secure...

is that the viruses for it are traditionally written by 9th graders who use the B: drive...

Happy birthday!

Finally, you're old enough to rent a car [foxnews.com].

Stealing thumder from the Mac users

Mac OS has never had a virus problem.

Maya Angelou eat your heart out!

Every 50th booting you'd get this (Note "-" is represents a ). 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!- Now if I had gotten that when I was a little kid on my little Apple 2, I'd cry.

Your computer is now stoned!

Anyone remember that one? It was such a pain in the ass at the time, but it didn't go around and delete files, etc. And we got it from pirating program after program. Solution? Install a pirated version of the first anti-virus programs. I'm so old that I can't remember what exactly it was... It might actually have been Norton.

Not the oldest.

I had an Atari 800 back in 1979. In 1980 I took a small piece of malware someone else wrote and turned it into a virus which would remain memory-resident and self-replicate. After formatting any diskette the victim inserted into the drive, it wrote a hidden file to infect any machine the disk was then used on. This was a payback for the people who were getting pirated software free and then turning around to sell it. I'm pretty sure I still have the source code for it somewhere.

I'm not claiming mine was the oldest because I'm sure someone did something similar on the old heavy iron even earlier than my little "payload" as we called then it.

Really Really Not the oldest.

A couple thousand years ago, I deliberately infected a wooden abacus with termites, and put it in the mud hut with all the other abaci.

1988 Morris internet worm

That was the first virus I remember, but its just 19 years old. It paralyzed the internet when it was released. But then the Net just had a few thousand nodes, most of them in the university. The worm was supposed to count nodes by sending a copy of itself to every entry in the host table, but the author forget to account for duplicates and circularities. So it just replicated until it filled the process spaces and internet bandwidth.

Um no. it wasn't

1981 - Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are some of the first viruses "in the wild," or in the public domain. Found on the Apple II operating system, the viruses spread through Texas A&M via pirated computer games.

Bullshit!

I had sex with a PDP-11 in 1973 and it gave me chlamydia. That predates this asshat by almost a decade. Where's my trophy?!

Re:Bullshit!

Your trophy is that warm sensation everytime you pee, amigo.

Maybe not a virus....

but I remember a very old Scientific American article (60's maybe?) about program wars in which two programs would simultaneously reside in memory and each would seek out the other to destroy it, usually by inflicting a fatal erasure of a vital part from the memory stack. The article described the programs' different strategies of seek-and-destroy while simultaneously moving itself around to avoid destruction. Pretty primitive, but great fun.

Poor Elk...

"The virus, which did little more than annoy the user, Elk Cloner..." I knew Elk, and more than annoyed. Who new we'd all yearn for the day viruses were that benign?

In college...

Late 90's/Early '00s. Had a friend working the computer lab when full shutdown occurred and EVERY screen crashes and goes blank (I THINK it was due to Melissa)...near finals, so everyone was working on their final projects and papers in the labs. 50+people saying "Oh, S---" at the same time. Most profs were nice and had some sympathy.

I wonder if all my disks have this virus...

I had a friend back in the early 90s who one day found that his Amiga 500 wouldn't load some game. Then he proceeded to warm boot and test ALL his other floppy disks to see if they had the same problem. That virus destroyed 50 disks worth of pirated games in less than an hour.

The first virus? I do not think so.

Sorry, but Creeper beat that Apple II virus by about 10 years.

http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?c hapter=153310937 [viruslist.com]

Furthermore http://www.viruslist.com/en/viruses/encyclopedia?c hapter=153310910 [viruslist.com] states that such ideas and programs already started in the 40s and 50s.

Slow news day ?

Seriously, how did this make the headlines ?
All it does is encourage people to flame it.
Pretty much for as long as computers have been useful there have been other people interested in stopping them from being useful. It's not really something to celebrate.

The Computer Virus Turns 25 in July

Wow, the Virus could be Blogging's father [slashdot.org]. That is if he's not reading slashdot - in this case older brother is the best he can be (not old enough to be even Vlogging's dad).

still infecting...in emulators

Not enough time right now to go into depth, but I sorting through a collection of 5.25" Apple images, I saw this message popup on one of the emulators "bootup". Had no idea what it was and didn't bother looking too far in depth into it. This was back in 2006, when I was organizing my collection of stuff I had written as a kid, random public domain disks I had copies, of, random things I had made copies of as a kid from my gradeschool computer lab, etc...in the process, plenty of "catalog" commands ran (this is how it spreads, he has the 6502 source http://www.skrenta.com/cloner/clone-src.txt [skrenta.com] on his website and a few more items about it there), plenty of disks "swapped" out of virtual floppy drives, so I'm sure the infection is well spread.

Maybe I'll keep it around as a living pet in my emulator :)

If I could invent a time machine....

I'd beat that kid up after school.

Then go to my house and stop me from burning that wash rag in the kitchen sink!

This Was Not the First Virus

According to other reporting this is not actually the first virus. The first virus really should be the Creeper virus that infected DARPANET systems back in the early 70's. According to Viruslist, the virus was written for the Tenex operating system and was capable of independently gaining access through a modem and copying itself to a remote system. Once infected, the system would display the following message: "I'M THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN."

The Reaper was written to replicate and find Creeper and delete it. Then came Rabbit in 1974 which caused systems to crash because it screwed system performance due to replicating so fast (wonder why it was called Rabbit.....)

If the computer virus just turned 25...

...and Tron had it's 25th anniversary just a few weeks before....Coincidence?
*insert ominous music*

Student Animation

Inspired from
http://www.elkcloner.com/ [elkcloner.com]

Cookie monster virus?

When was that? I'm guessing late 70s (the Andy Williams show dates back to then).

For the younger set: the virus used to take over the screen with the text "I'm the cookie monster - I want a cookie". Then "Cookie Cookie Cookie". You had to type in "COOKIE" to stop it.

Happy Birthday to Computer Viruses!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to viruses,
Hap...

Fatal Error: HappyBirthday.exe has been corrupted. Please contact your system administrator.
[OK]

Re:Maybe my computer has a virus?

Why was parent modded flamebait? The GP post really was lame and poorly adapted to the current crop of Apple computers. Perhaps because he stated that "the old Mac OS sucked"? Well, back then it did for many reasons including that it wasn't even a preemptive multitasking OS.

Re:Pakistani Brain Virus

That was the first PC virus, created in 1986.

Re:Who was he?

This is a sinful pleasure of mine, but honestly...

Worst Movie Evar!

Re:Maybe my computer has a virus?

Well some people admired of MacOS works and millions of hours multimedia, billions of mainstream newspapers, millions of scientific research done with it. The stuff you watch on your HDTV if produced back in 1990s is probably completely produced on that poor old OS which you claim to have sucked.

It could not cope with the modern times, it is true but it doesn't make it "suck". What sucks is the people switching to Mac OS X/Apple and trying to convert it to some nerd OS they were used to. Glad that Apple at least manages to /ignore them at least for now.

Some shareware applications on OS X are plain copying OS 9 way of things (UI behaviour) and they are hugely popular. I am not saying Apple shouldn't make a genius move as making NeXT "down to end user" and progressing it as new operating system. I am just saying MacOS is/was NOT Windows 3.1 or DOS. It really deserves some respect.

Also Mac OS X is not Unix Based, it is Mach+FreeBSD hybrid OS. It is the incarnation of NeXT. In fact, even at current level, a horribly broken FreeBSD layer OS X is still functional, got a badly cloned Mini upstairs, believe me I know. ;)

Re:Maybe my computer has a virus?

Perhaps DMA is turned off or one of your drives is fried. I'd run a HD diagnostic test as it seems the system is freezing while it's waiting for read/write attempts to error out.

Re:Source on site:

The NES used a modified version of the 6502.

In addition, the Commodore PET and VIC-20 used the 6502, and the 64 and 128 used the 6510 (a modified 6502.)

Also, the Atari 2600, 5200, 400, and 800 used either a modified 6502 (for the 2600) or a 6502 (for the others.)

Re:Maybe my computer has a virus?

The Apple II ProDos in 1982 had about as much in common with Mac OS X in 2007 as LINUX in 1989 has with Linux today. (That is, it didn't exist. ;))

We would be talking about Apple DOS 3.3 here, which had been around for two years, and had already gotten a bugfix. (Then again, finding out what version you actually had was difficult, as they weren't versioned differently, and they dropped in place of one another - one could actually put the bugfixed 3.3 on a non-bugfixed System Master, and the HELLO code wouldn't be changed, with the date being the old date... vice versa also worked...)

Re:Pakistani Brain Virus

While the two brothers did have a hardware store, they were NOT selling pirated software. They had had written a medical software and they wanted to discourage people from pirating their software.

I know because I my house is just just a few blocks away from their shop. I have met Basit (Don't know if he is the elder one or the younger one) and he is quite an easy-going, nice person. The brothers are still in business and are running an ISP these days.

When I was growing up in Pakistan, I knew US as the land of GI Joe and Spider Man. But we had the brothers that wrote the first PC virus and rocked the world!! What can I say, a teenager needs his heros :)

Windows the first virus? Don't think so...

That would mean that Microsoft innovated SOMETHING in the modern era. Not possible. But, it may be the SECOND virus....