RE: write viruses? it's controversy time of the month

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

In the early 1970s, I thought about creating a Fortran program that
submitted 2 copies of itself to the internal card reader device of an IBM
mainframe.  Luckily I never had the time to actually write and test the
program.

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: funsec-bounces () linuxbox org [mailto:funsec-bounces () linuxbox org] On
Behalf Of Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 3:43 PM
To: david.a.harley () gmail com
Cc: funsec () linuxbox org
Subject: Re: [funsec] write viruses? it's controversy time of the month

On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:16:26 BST, David Harley said:
> > Was that your first one?  Elk is supposed to be the oldest virus in 
> > the wild, from 1982?  so ~24 years. 
>
> 1983, IIRC, though Peter Szor says '82. There seem to have been a couple
of
> Apple II jobbies before that, though, and these weren't the first
> replicative programs. I decline to be drawn into the "worms vs viruses"
> argument yet again. 

Replicative programs by way of quining were well understood in the mid-60s.
I'm fairly sure that there were worm-ish things running around Multics by
the mid-70s, and the Jargon File documents a Xerox CP-V hack involving
"Robin Hood" and "Friar Tuck" in the mid-70s as well.

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.