The History of Malware
The First Malware
In the early 1970s, a U.S. military computer network became infected with the Creeper virus. The program accessed remote systems via a modem. Infected systems allegedly displayed the message, "I'M THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN."
"Rabbit" began infecting computers in 1974. Contrary to our common conception of what a virus does, the Rabbit did nothing except to spread to other machines and multiply. The name "Rabbit" was derived from the speed with which the virus multiplied. In fact, Rabbit created so many copies of itself that it hurt machine performance.
Most contend that the first computer virus to affect the public was named "Elk Cloner." Created by Rich Skrenta, a fifteen-year-old high school student, the virus was written in 1982 for Apple II systems. The virus spread by infecting the Apple II's operating system, Apple DOS 3.3, which was stored on floppy disks. When the computer booted from an infected floppy, the virus affected the workings of the computer and monitored disk access. Further, when an uninfected floppy was inserted, the virus copied itself to that disk, thereby creating a chain of infected floppy disks. Rich Skrenta's virus displayed a poem on the fiftieth boot:
Elk Cloner: The program with a personality
It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes it's Cloner!It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too
Send in the Cloner.
From there, viruses "in the wild" (in the public and not isolated to one or a few computers) took off.