If you’ve ever had to spend a lot of money on antivirus software, you’d be forgiven for wanting to take Dr Fred Cohen aside for, to put it politely, a few choice words…
After a neighbouring university created a Trojan horse – which allowed hackers to gain access to a machine – Dr Cohen realised that the Trojan could be programmed to duplicate itself.
This is the proverbial lightbulb going off.“I was sitting there in the class and all of a sudden it dawned on me that if that Trojan horse copied itself into other programs, then all those programs would be infected, and then everybody that ran any of those programs would get infected and so forth.
“It was at that point immediately obvious that it was game over…”
Dr Cohen believes that genuine research into possible threats has not happened for quite some time.
“As far as I can tell, somewhere around the late eighties or early nineties was the end of the real research related to computer viruses.
“There are businesses that want to make sure they keep making money by having cures that fix the last one, but not the next one.”
NO! Say it isn’t so.
What E-Tard? No way to connect this to Bush and his failures in office? Get OUT!
#1
He’s not the inventor of the first virus, he’s
the inventor of computer virus defense techniques.
A bit different?
#2
Does anyone here “spend a lot of money on anti-virus software”? Use free AVG ,
spybot S&D, and Adaware. Costs = $0
Better yet , but your hard drive on the shelf.
Boot off of a Linux ‘live cd’ that can run
100% in ram like Puppy Linux. Problem solved!
Most of us in the industry have known Cohen for years. There were several pre-cohen claimants for the title. (in 1971 there was a worm called CREEPER at BBN, for example) but Cohen gets the title, in my book.
What you are overlooking is that the only criteria that makes something a virus is that it replicates. (makes copies of itself)
Most of the viruses we ever tracked did only that and nothing more. The first Apple II virus was written by kids in Philadelphia, followed by Skrenta and Elk Cloner.
The first PC virus found in the wild was the Pakistani BRAIN virus written by Fasit and Amjad Faruq alvi in 1988.
None of those mentioned had any destructive action at all. Almost no viruses did anything destructive–but they got all the press. (if it bleeds it leads)
Except in the movies. In the movies viruses cause earthquakes, tip over oil tankers, open bank vault doors and so on. Movie viruses are magic, the modern deus ex machina.