15 students are the number one virus maker in the world.

14:38 The Associated Press published an article on the 4th, reviewing the 25th anniversary of the birth of computer virus. The article says that 25 years ago, a student aged 15 wrote the world's first computer virus. At first, it was just a "little prank", but now thousands of viruses have become a nightmare for all computer users. The advent of the Internet era has provided a new model for the spread of viruses.

This was originally a prank of a ninth-grade student, in order to tease friends who were wary of his previous traps, and this prank made rich skrenta the first computer virus.

"Stupid little prank"

In the next 25 years, although Caronta founded "Topix" online news company and helped develop the cooperative webpage catalogue owned by Netscape, a subsidiary of time warner Inc. Company, he was most mentioned in the world for releasing "ElkCloner" virus.

Calenta, 40, said, "It's just a silly little prank. I think if I have to choose between being famous and not being famous, I'd rather be famous. However, it is a strange placeholder, replacing everything I have done. "

The "ElkCloner" virus replicates itself like all other viruses, but it bears little resemblance to current malicious programs. However, in retrospect, it is the initiator of all the headache security problems. With the increasing popularity of computers, there are more and more security problems. Calenta's friends didn't trust him at that time, because in the common piracy circles at that time, people often exchanged software such as computer games, and Calenta often changed the floppy disks he handed over and released some ironic screen information. Many friends began to refuse the floppy disk he sent.

From 1 to 1 million

He wrote a boot zone virus. When the infected floppy disk runs the boot program or starts, it will put a copy of the virus into the computer's memory. Once someone inserts an uninfected floppy disk into the computer and enters the "catalog" command to find the file list, the virus copy is also written to the floppy disk. Then, the floppy disk just infected with the virus spread to other people, other computers and other places.

Although this kind of prank annoys the victims, it is relatively harmless compared with today's virus. When the virus-infected floppy disk is started for the 50th time, a poem written by Ka Long Ta will appear. It says, "It will infect all your floppy disks; It will infiltrate your chip. "

Carunta began to spread the virus among friends in schools and local computer clubs at the beginning of 1982. Years later, he will continue to hear the stories of other victims. 10 years later, a sailor met in the Gulf War.

There are hundreds of thousands of viruses today, perhaps more than 6.5438+0 million, depending on how to calculate the subtle variants.

The first computer virus infected with Microsoft operating system appeared in 1986. It is said that at that time, two brothers in Pakistan wrote a boot zone virus program nicknamed "Brain" to punish those who spread pirated software. Although the virus did not cause serious damage, the phone numbers of the two brothers' computer stores will be displayed during maintenance.

Viruses in the internet age

With the development of Internet, a new way of virus transmission has emerged: e-mail.

1999 "Melissa" virus, 2000 "Love Bug" virus and 2003 "Big Promise" virus are just the tip of the iceberg. These security threats have thrown countless computers in the world into chaos. The method is to trick people into clicking on email attachments and start a program to automatically send copied files to other victims.

Some early viruses destroy the network, while later viruses destroy files or have other destructive characteristics.

Richard ford, a computer professor at Florida Institute of Technology, said that compared with the early security threats, "the basic technologies behind them are very similar, but once the virus took control of the computer, what it could do changed significantly".

Later viruses spread through instant messaging and file sharing software, and some spread faster through the vulnerability of Windows networking function.

Recently, people have designed viruses to steal personal data, or created forwarding stations to make it more difficult to track spam. However, the virus suddenly didn't spread so fast. Virus writers are now more concerned with profit than reputation. They are all trying to keep a low profile, avoid their works being discovered and cleared, and avoid their income-generating mechanism being cleared.

Recently, many malicious programs are not viruses technically, because they don't replicate themselves, but users are easily infected when browsing malicious websites. These websites can take advantage of any security vulnerabilities in computer software.

Dave Marcus, research manager of Avert, a safe-haven laboratory owned by McAfee, said that although virus outbreaks around the world are not common recently, "Believe it or not, there are more malicious programs (designed to destroy computer systems) than ever before. We find 150 to 175 new malicious programs every day. Five years ago, there might be 100 every week. "

Give birth to anti-virus industry

Symantec was founded in the same year that Calenta released the "ElkCloner" virus, but before 1989 launched anti-virus products for Apple Mac computers, the company had dabbled in non-security software. Nowadays, the global hardware, software and services related to computer security have formed an industry worth $38 billion, and the Internet Data Center (IDC) predicts that this figure will reach $67 billion in 20 10.

Companies and Internet service providers have established protection systems, and virus writers have taken a fancy to emerging platforms, including mobile devices and network-based services, such as social networking sites.

Dave Cole, director of Symantec's Security Response Center, said: "Malicious programmers don't think you only use computers, and they don't want to limit their targets to computers."

This is not to say that whenever someone receives spam from a forwarding station created by a virus, or finds that the computer is running slowly due to a latent virus, it should be blamed on Calenta. In any case, there is no evidence that later virus writers have heard of Calenta or his tricks.

Fred Cohen, a security expert, wrote a doctoral thesis on computer viruses at 1986. He said that when conditions are ripe, with more and more families owning computers, "it is only a matter of time before the virus appears."

In fact, there were many viruses before the emergence of "ElkCloner" virus, which were only experimental or had limited spread. Many people think that the virus written by Calenta was the first real virus, because it spread on mainstream home computers at that time.