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| History
of computer viruses | |
Like any other field in computer science, viruses have evolved
-a great deal indeed- over the years. In the series of press releases which start
today, we will look at the origins and evolution of malicious code since it first
appeared up to the present.
Going back to the origin of viruses, it was
in 1949 that Mathematician John Von Neumann described self-replicating programs
which could resemble computer viruses as they are known today. However, it was
not until the 60s that we find the predecessor of current viruses. In that decade,
a group of programmers developed a game called Core Wars, which could reproduce
every time it was run, and even saturate the memory of other players' computers.
The creators of this peculiar game also created the first antivirus, an application
named Reeper, which could destroy copies created by Core Wars.
However,
it was only in 1983 that one of these programmers announced the existence of Core
Wars, which was described the following year in a prestigious scientific magazine:
this was actually the starting point of what we call computer viruses today.
At that time, a still young MS-DOS was starting to become
the preeminent operating system worldwide. This was a system with great prospects,
but still many deficiencies as well, which arose from software developments and
the lack of many hardware elements known today. Even like this, this new operating
system became the target of a virus in 1966: Brain, a malicious code created
in Pakistan which infected boot sectors of disks so that their contents could
not be accessed. That year also saw the birth of the first Trojan: an application
called PC-Write.
Shortly after, virus writers realized that infecting
files could be even more harmful to systems. In 1987, a virus called Suriv-02
appeared, which infected COM files and opened the door to the infamous viruses
Jerusalem or Viernes 13. However, the worst was still to come: 1988
set the date when the "Morris worm" appeared, infecting 6,000 computers.
From
that date up to 1995 the types of malicious codes that are known today started
being developed: the first macro viruses appeared, polymorphic viruses... Some
of these even triggered epidemics, such as MichaelAngelo. However, there
was an event that changed the virus scenario worldwide: the massive use of the
Internet and e-mail. Little by little, viruses started adapting to this new situation
until the appearance, in 1999, of Melissa, the first malicious code to
cause a worldwide epidemic, opening a new era for computer viruses. Source:
http://www.pandasoftware.com |
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