After the Internet has reached into almost every home and become a global network of support services of various companies, computer viruses have spread even more and really started to produce significant damage, compromising not only data on ordinary users’ computers, but also some of the utmost importance of the various institutions, banks or airlines. It is easy to deduce that their services have become inaccessible, and this has resulted in significant financial losses and in some cases huge losses. Nowadays, a computer is unthinkable without an anti-virus solution or a security software, especially if you run on Windows, the most targeted by malicious programmers.
Two decades ago, the situation was not so worrying. If you remember, one of the viruses in the early ’90s was only intended to convey different messages, a kind of underground computer, or even entertain the “victim”. So, before we really get to the serious threats, it is imperative to mention the ancestors of today’s viruses – from where we started and where we arrived.
Creeper was the first computer virus, in 1971, or so I read on a Website. It was designed for experimental purposes under the Tenex operating system. Creeper is a self-replicating virus and leaves behind the message telling you that this was the Creeper and if you can, you may catch it. To remove it, it was created the program called Reaper, the first solution against viruses in history.
Elk Cloner was developed in 1982. Created for the Apple II operating system by a young boy of 15 years, the virus infected the boot sector of floppy disks, and was installed easy on your computer. The virus was further spread to other disks. Elk Cloner displayed various messages on the display like poetry and flashing images. Brain was the first virus for MS-DOS, in 1986. This is also a boot virus that emerged from the desire of two Pakistani brothers to protect medical software against piracy. Although it was designed for a relatively small circle, the virus has spread all over the world because nobody was ready for such a phenomenon.
Morris is the ancestor of today’s worms and appeared in 1988. Morris, considered one of the first worms that spread on the Internet, has infected over 6,000 computers in the United States, including those of NASA. It was written with the desire to do no harm (the author wanted to assess just how vast the Internet is, by counting all the computers connected), but an error led to the continuous replication of the program which led to blocking networks. This form of expression is similar to the so-called DoS attacks (Denial of Service) that are taking place today. Morris worm caused total losses estimated at $ 96 million. Vienna is the virus that has inspired developers from today and appeared one year earlier, 1987.
Vienna was unknown until it started spreading malicious codes in the world. At the same time, it was an oasis of inspiration for those curious to experiment such programs. It all started after a certain man, which created it, said that all he found out about viruses, learn from a simple book.
Today we stop with these viruses with Datacrime, which formated your HDDs the way it wanted at that time in 1989. It formated the C: drive. Fortunately, the area where it was was heavily spread (the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) was little compared to the whole world and the period during which it acted as well: about two and a half months.
In 1992, the first virus for Windows appears. It infected executable files (*. exe) and opened a new stage of evolution of viruses – malicious programs were to appear like mushrooms after rain. In spring of 1993, Microsoft launched its own anti-virus program – MSAV, but the avalanche of viruses became more massive.
