A Brief History of the Computer Virus

The very first computer virus was a viral worm known as THE CREEPER. This bizarre virus was created in 1971 as an experiment by Bob Thomas, a programmer with BBN Technologies Research and Development. Thomas simply wanted to explore the possibilities of a self-replicating program, and hence, the first virus was born.

The Creeper would infect DEC PDP-10 computers running on the TENEX operating system and display the message, "I'M THE CREEPER, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN."

The program was made as simply an experiment, but when these computers were plugged into ARPANET, the predecessor to the modern Internet, THE CREEPER found its way onto a number of remote computers outside of the lab.

The virus spread faster than Thomas had ever intended or hoped for, and some time later, a program known as The Reaper was released. The Reaper was the very first anti-virus program ever designed, created specifically to clear computers of THE CREEPER virus.

It is unknown who wrote The Reaper, but there are some theories that it was Bob Thomas, the same programmer who wrote THE CREEPER. Some suspect that Thomas perhaps released the virus on purpose, knowing he could sell the anti-virus, but it is more likely that he simply wanted to reverse any damage he had done through his research and development experiment with BBN.

The first virus to actually go "into the wild," as in “outside” of that early network of computer labs, was the Elk Cloner virus. The Elk Cloner virus was written by a high school student, Richard Skrenta, in 1981.

The Elk Cloner virus was literally written as a practical joke. It would make its way onto Apple DOS 3.3 systems via floppy disk and display a short poem, beginning with the line "Elk Cloner: The Program with a Personality."

If you used a floppy disk infected with the virus, then every floppy disk on which you copied a file would then become infected with the virus, and as such, the virus would then spread to anyone you would loan the disk to, and so on and so on.

Skrenta had no idea how far the virus would go when he first wrote it onto a computer game disk, assuming it would maybe surprise a few of his friends, get a laugh out of them, and that would be the end of it. However, 1981 was an era where the home computer was first starting to make its humble debut, and by so many degrees of separation, the Elk Cloner virus slowly made its way onto hundreds or thousands of computers.

Today, Skrenta has actually grown from his origins as a computer prankster to become a very successful programmer and game designer in his own right, having developed one of the earliest online multiplayer games throughout the early nineties, Olympia, so while Skrenta may be blamed for having created the first home computer virus, he can also be thanked for having created a precursor to modern online gaming.

While these early viruses were made as experiments or as practical jokes, it wouldn't be long before criminals had found a new tool to commit more crimes. The viruses we're dealing with today are not merely designed to get a laugh out of their targets or to explore the possibilities of modern technology. They are, by and large, designed only to exploit.

The first piece of actual malware (as in a virus specifically intended to harm the user's computer) ever written was the (c)Brain virus, written by the Farooq Alvi Brothers, a software design team operating out of Pakistan. The program would infect DOS systems by rendering 7kb of space into unusable bad sectors. 7kb doesn't sound like much today, but this was back in 1986, when seven kilobytes were actually quite precious.

The virus would slow a computer down, but would do no actual irreparable damage. Booting up would display the following messages...

"Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Brain & Amjads (pvt) Ltd VIRUS_SHOE RECORD V9.0 Dedicated to the dynamic memories of millions of viruses who are no longer with us today - Thanks GOODNESS!! BEWARE OF THE er..VIRUS : this program is catching program follows after these messages....$#@%$@!!"

"Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Basit * Amjad (pvt) Ltd. BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES 730 NIZAM BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN LAHORE-PAKISTANPHONE: 430791,443248,280530. Beware of this VIRUS.... Contact us for vaccination..."

The virus actually included the phone numbers and names of its makers. This is because the virus was actually created for a very good reason. The Farooq Alvi Brothers specialized in making software for hospitals, and a program they had written for heart monitoring machines was being pirated. Pirated versions often wound up becoming corrupted, and this could easily lead to accidental deaths.

The (c)Brain virus is easily justified from an ethical standpoint, but, unfortunately, the virus wound up spreading not only through the pirating networks, but onto innocent home computers as well.

This practice of using a virus to deter would-be pirates is still in use today, though it is illegal. Thanks to the advent of file sharing programs like Napster, and later, Bear Share and Limewire, many music and film distributors have taken to releasing Trojans and viruses onto these file-sharing networks disguised as popular songs and movies. The issue of right and wrong here is debatable, but it does remain illegal.

Today, the Farooq Alvi Brothers still make a living as programmers, being amongst the leading Internet providers in Pakistan.

Throughout the 1980s when people started using home computers more and more, we saw the first real wave of computer viruses. This was, of course, before the Internet, but viruses still managed to proliferate thanks to interchangeable media.

While it was a much slower process than it is today, viruses could still reach hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of home computers through the sharing of interchangeable media like floppy disks, as well as the early protoplasmic material that would eventually become the Internet: Dial-up modems and BBS boards.

These boards were full of people looking to download new software either for cheap or for free (meaning, of course, pirated), and these users proved to be very easy targets for anyone hoping to infect home computers with viruses.  

The first Trojans appeared on the Bulletin Board Systems. When a user came on a board asking for free software, another user might oblige, providing them with the software, but with a virus attached. This was not necessarily the intention of the file sharers, but rather, they may have been handed the file with a virus unknowingly, or it may have worked its way into the file in question simply by association with their infected computer, meaning that, perhaps, every file being sent from their system was infected.

Even at this stage, virus programmers were really just hobbyists, and while their work may have spread quickly, it was still a relatively small phenomenon, and there was little fear of identity theft happening as a result (although the damaged and slow computers weren't exactly appreciated, nonetheless).

Starting around the 1990's, it became possible to embed a virus directly into an email, with or without a downloadable attachment, thanks to shared file programs like Microsoft Outlook.