NEWS ABOUT: Elk Cloner
Elk Cloner stories: 2 news briefs
'Dumb little practical joke' led to $38 billion security industry
Associated Press Sep 2, 07 5:56 PM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
A prankster who wrote the first computer virus 25 years ago says only, “It was some dumb little practical joke.” Yet Richard Skrenta’s desire to infiltrate other Apple II’s with a poem (“It will get on all your disks; it will infiltrate your chips”) marked the beginning of a worldwide virus craze that spawned a $38 billion security industry and 150 to 175 new pieces of malware every day.
More »
Salon Jul 13, 07 4:52 PM CDT
(Newser Summary) -
A long time ago (1982), in a galaxy not so far, far away, Rich Skrenta, then a clever 9th grader, invented what may have been the first computer virus—Elk Cloner. It was, by current standards, a benign virus that Skrenta installed on his school computer, so that every time one of his fellow students copied a floppy disk, some doggerel from Skrenta appeared on their screens.
More »
