Creeper (program)
| 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 virus.[3] [2] Creeper infected DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system.The Reaper program was created by Ray Tomlinson[4] to delete the Creeper program.
Reaper
| Initial release | 1972 |
|---|---|
| Development status | Historic |
| Operating system | TENEX |
The Reaper program was a computer worm, like Creeper, but its purpose was to delete the latter. This fact was an inspiration for Core War, the series Hyperion by Dan Simmons, especially later books Endymion and The Rise of Endymion and for the D-Reaper, the final enemy of Digimon Tamers.
References
- ↑ Thomas Chen, Jean-Marc Robert (2004). "The Evolution of Viruses and Worms". Retrieved 2009-02-16.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 From the first email to the first YouTube video: a definitive internet history. Tom Meltzer and Sarah Phillips. The Guardian. 23 October 2009
- ↑ IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volumes 27-28. IEEE Computer Society, 2005. 74. Retrieved from Google Books on 13 May 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."
- ↑ John Metcalf (2014). "Core War: Creeper & Reaper". Retrieved 2014-05-01.