What is suggested as the world’s first computer virus is created and the world’s first computer worm goes global. All on today’s On This Day from TEST Huddle.
1983 – The World’s First Computer Virus?
The first virus in history is conceived on this date as an academic experiment to be presented at an upcoming computer security seminar developed by Len Adleman. He created the script in eight hours of work on a VAX 11/750 Unix system, and he dubs his creation a “virus.” Adleman would later demonstrate the virus at the security seminar on November 10. This is according to Fred Cohen’s 1984 paper Computer Viruses – Theory and Experiments.
1988 – The World’s First Computer Worm?
The Morris worm starts to reach infamy. One day after its release the worm starts to affect computers connected to the internet. The first mention of the worm is posted to Usenet. The New York Times learns that the author of the worm is Cornell University graduate student Robert T. Morris, Jr, a son of Bob Morris, Chief National Computer Security Center Scientist with the National Security Agency (NSA). The worm was originally created by Morris as part of a legitimate research project in an attempt to count the number of computers actively connected to the internet around the globe. However, due to a programming error, the day will become known as Black Thursday as administrators around the country discover that their computers are hampered by hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of shell processes that appear faster than they can be deactivated. In the U.S. about six thousand computers, (one tenth of all connections to the internet) crash.
Images: Wikipedia
