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This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world’s first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Besides sheer quantity, viruses, which were originally used as academic proof of concepts, quickly turned into geek pranks, then evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, the virus scene had been monetized, and virtually all viruses were developed with the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models.
In the following story, FortiGuard Labs looks at the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years and explains their historical significance.
1971: Creeper: catch me if you can
While theories on self-replicating automatas were developed by genius mathematician Von Neumann in the early 50s, the first real computer virus was released “in lab” in 1971 by an employee of a company working on building ARPANET, the Internet’s ancestor.
Intriguing feature: Creeper looks for a machine on the network, transfers to it, displays the message “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” and starts over, thereby hoping from system to system. It was a pure proof of concept that ties the roots of computer viruses to those of the Internet.
1982: Elk Cloner
Written by a 15-year old as a way to booby trap his friends’ Apple II computer systems without physical access to them, Elk Cloner spread via floppy disks. Infected machines displayed a harmless poem, dedicated to the virus’ glory.
Intriguing feature: Elk Cloner was the first virus ever to spread outside of the lab it was created in. Its global impact was negligible and its intent plainly geeky.
1987: Jerusalem
First detected in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the aptly-named Jerusalem is somewhat deleterious. Each year on Friday the 13th, this virus deleted every single program that’s run on the infected system.
Intriguing feature: Jerusalem is the first example of a destructive virus to have a global impact. Of course, the sheer number of computers back then was infinitesimal, compared to today.
1992: Michelangelo: The sleeper must awaken
The dormant Michelangelo virus was designed to awaken on March 6th (Michelangelo’s birthday – as in the Renaissance artist, not the Ninja Turtle) and erase critical parts of infected computers’ hard drives.
Intriguing feature: The promises of destruction it carried spawned a media frenzy. In the weeks preceding March 6th, media relayed (and some may say amplified) experts’ predictions forecasting 5 million computers going definitively down. Yet, on March 6th, only a few thousand data losses were reported – and public trust in AV companies’ ethics was tainted for a while.
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