PureBasic Forums - English

The Evolution of Computer Viruses

If you take the way back machine, you would find out that the art of
writing computer viruses dates back to 1949 when mathematician
John Von Neumann described self-replicating programs. These
programs very closely resemble today's computer viruses. Then in the
60's, programmers developed, a game called Core Wars that reproduced
every time it ran; it is considered a direct predecessor of current viruses.

Core Wars saturated the memory of other players' computers (sound
familiar). These same developers then created an application called
Reeper to destroy Core War copies. It was the world's first antivirus. This
was a secret war that only the computer elite was involved. It stayed
hidden until 1983 when when A.K. Dewdney published several articles in
Scientific American describing their exploits. Mark that date in history, it
represents the actual starting point of computer virus and antivirus.

Soon thereafter, Suriv-02 infecting COM files in 1987 opening the door to
the infamous Jerusalem or Friday the 13th virus. In 1988, the 'Morris
worm' appeared, infecting some 6,000 computers. The onslaught had
begun and virus writers realized that they could cause even more damage
than originally contemplated.

From that date to 1995, malicious codes that we are familiar with today
were developed and the first macro and polymorphic viruses appeared,
some of these even triggered epidemics, such as MichaelAngelo.

Taking the virus wars to new levels did not occur until the wide scale
proliferation of the Internet and email! Little by little, viruses adapted and
escalated to this "new" venue. Then in 1999, Melissa became the first
malicious code to cause a worldwide epidemic, opening the doors to a
new era of computer viruses.

So that's a short history of how this branch of computer "science" got
started. The worm has turned...

--
quote from Core Wars site ::

Core Wars is a programming game wherein players
write Warriors that fight it out to the death in a
virtual 'ring'. These warriors are written in a special
assembly language called "Redcode" and played in
a simulated environment known as "MARS"

I found this interesting.. and even more interesting about the Core Wars website.

- np

Hehe , nice article.

That reminds me of the Spectrum days, a friend and me had bought a DICiPLE each (a floppy and more for the Spectrum).

One day I decided to play a practical joke on him, so I prepared an autobooting disk with a small machine code program I made, didn't do much, just print a flashing screen similar to those when the computer hung up, and a message saying that the Logical Array Unit had failed in the style of Spectrum. Meanwhile the program saved copies of itself onto the floppy.

Anyway I went to his house and gave him the disk saying it had some "goodies" , so he booted up, and It worked, he was totaly convinced something fatal was happening to his beloved Speccy.

What I didn't expect was him getting so nervous that he rapidly pulled the mains so hard that the poor old Speccy flew onto the floor (luckyly no harm was done).

I must confess I had a good laugh, but of course I had to promise never to write something like that again, and I haven't

All this said, Virus coders are scum, they spoil the fun of computing.

... the poor old Speccy flew onto the floor (luckyly no harm was done).

Thank goodness for rubber keys. They just kept bouncing back for more.

Its a good article. My only concern is that somebody will get the impression that Core Wars was somehow responsible for the Viri of today.

Core Wars is a great game, and still going strong.

http://www.koth.org/

The game did prefigure what was to later happen on a much grander scale.

GedB wrote:Its a good article. My only concern is that somebody will get the impression that Core Wars was somehow responsible for the Viri of today.

Core Wars is a great game, and still going strong.

http://www.koth.org/

The game did prefigure what was to later happen on a much grander scale.

I think the confusion would be minimal. In the first paragraph it
differentiates 1949 from 1960.

[more]

1949
Theories for self-replicating programs are first developed.

1981
Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are some of the first viruses “in the wild,â€