Creeper (program)

Creeper
Aliases The First Computer Virus
Type Jamming Software, Worm
Isolation 1971
Author(s) Bob Thomas
Operating system(s) affected TENEX

Creeper was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN[1] in 1971. It was designed not to damage but to demonstrate a mobile application.[2] It is generally accepted to be the first computer worm,[3] although the notion of a "computer virus" did not exist in the 1970s.[2] Creeper infected DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system.

Reaper

Reaper
Initial release 1972
Development status Historic
Operating system TENEX

The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper.[4]

References

  1. ^ Thomas Chen, Jean-Marc Robert (2004). "The Evolution of Viruses and Worms". http://vx.netlux.org/lib/atc01.html. Retrieved 2009-02-16. 
  2. ^ a b From the first email to the first YouTube video: a definitive internet history. Tom Meltzer and Sarah Phillips. The Guardian. 23 October 2009
  3. ^ IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volumes 27-28. IEEE Computer Society, 2005. 74. Retrieved from Google Books on May 13, 2011. "[...]from one machine to another led to experimentation with the Creeper program, which became the world's first computer worm: a computation that used the network to recreate itself on another node, and spread from node to node."
  4. ^ Computer Security Basics by Deborah Russell and G. T. Gangemi. O'Reilly, 1991. page 86. ISBN 0937175714