Rich Skrenta

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Richard "Rich" Skrenta (b.1967) is a computer programmer, and author of what is considered the first computer virus to be found 'in the wild' —the Elk Cloner virus infected Apple II machines in 1982.

He graduated from Northwestern University. Between 1989 and 1991 he worked at Commodore Business Machines with Amiga Unix. Between 1991 and 1995 he worked at Unix System Labs and from 1996 to 1998 with IP-level encryption at Sun Microsystems. He later left Sun and became one of the founders of Open Directory Project. He stayed onboard and worked on the directory as well as with Netscape Search, AOL Music and AOL Shopping.

He has been involved in VMS Monster, an old MUD for VMS. VMS Monster was the inspiration for TinyMUD. He is also known for his role in developing TASS, an ancestor of tin, the popular threaded Usenet newsreader for Unix systems.

In 1989 he started working on a multiplayer simulation game. In 1994 it was launched under the name Olympia as a pay-for-play game by Shadow Island Games. He is currently CEO of Topix.net.