Happy Birthday - The Computer Virus Turns 25

In July of 1982, 25 years ago, Rich Skrenta, who was a student at a Pittsburg, Pennsylvania high school, released the first computer virus at the young age of 15. Elk Cloner was the name of the virus, which used floppy disks to infect Apple II computers.

Although many computer viruses today are maliciously attempting to steal monetary or other secure information from your personal computers and wireless devices or attempting to shutdown computers and computer systems, the Elk Cloner device was rather mild, consisting of just a few lines of poetry. It didn't cause pop-up ads to cover your screen, it didn't cause all of your files to be deleted, and it didn't attempt to steal highly sensitive banking information. Phil Higgins, a senior partner with security integrator Brookcourt Solutions, said "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 organizations they work for."

According to Wikipedia, "Annoyance, in fact, was the reason for the virus's existence. Skrenta previously had the habit of giving out pirated computer games to his friends, but games modified such that they would stop working after a given number of games. This scheme guaranteed a high level of annoyance: by the time those friends grew to like the programs the programs would stop working, usually with some "humorous" message (at least as judged by their author). After a while those friends learned never to allow Skrenta near their disks. Then came Cloner, which could annoy friends without Skrenta physically gaining access to their disks."

Below are the few lines that came on screen when an Apple II was infected with the Elk Cloner Virus:

"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!"

According to an old Usenet post about the virus, "This message would appear when you hit reset after your 50th boot of an infected disk. Cloner counted boots; it played other subtle tricks about every five boots. It never tried to harm data, but it could cause problems if it tried to infect a non DOS 3.3 disk." Cloner was even mentioned in a November 4, 1985 article in Time Magazine. There are a few misunderstandings with regards to the distinction "first computer virus." Some historians consider "the Creeper virus" to be the first virus after it appeared on ARPANET, but Skrenta's virus is the first to have infected personal computers.

So, Happy Birthday Computer Virus! Now, please go away... you won't be missed!