The 9th grader who launched the AV business

[<rms () computerbytesman com>]

Prank starts 25 years of security woes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070831/ap_on_hi_te/computer_virus_anniversary_2
;_ylt=Au_cznck8Z4eWbdlmB57LfQE1vAI

NEW YORK - What began as a ninth-grade prank, a way to trick
already-suspicious friends who had fallen for his earlier practical jokes,
has earned Rich Skrenta notoriety as the first person ever to let loose a
personal computer virus. 

Although over the next 25 years, Skrenta started the online news business
Topix, helped launch a collaborative Web directory now owned by Time Warner
Inc.'s Netscape and wrote countless other computer programs, he is still
remembered most for unleashing the "Elk Cloner" virus on the world.

"It was some dumb little practical joke," Skrenta, now 40, said in an
interview. "I guess if you had to pick between being known for this and not
being known for anything, I'd rather be known for this. But it's an odd
placeholder for (all that) I've done."

"Elk Cloner" - self-replicating like all other viruses - bears little
resemblance to the malicious programs of today. Yet in retrospect, it was a
harbinger of all the security headaches that would only grow as more people
got computers - and connected them with one another over the Internet.

Skrenta's friends were already distrusting him because, in swapping computer
games and other software as part of piracy circles common at the time,
Skrenta often altered the floppy disks he gave out to launch taunting
on-screen messages. Many friends simply started refusing disks from him.

So during a winter break from the Mt. Lebanon Senior High School near
Pittsburgh, Skrenta hacked away on his Apple II computer - the dominant
personal computer then - and figured out how to get the code to launch those
messages onto disks automatically.

He developed what is now known as a "boot sector" virus. When it boots, or
starts up, an infected disk places a copy of the virus in the computer's
memory. Whenever someone inserts a clean disk into the machine and types the
command "catalog" for a list of files, a copy gets written onto that disk as
well. The newly infected disk is passed on to other people, other machines
and other locations.

The prank, though annoying to victims, is relatively harmless compared with
the viruses of today. Every 50th time someone booted an infected disk, a
poem he wrote would appear, saying in part, "It will get on all your disks;
it will infiltrate your chips."

Skrenta started circulating the virus in early 1982 among friends at his
school and at a local computer club. Years later, he would continue to hear
stories of other victims, including a sailor during the first Gulf War
nearly a decade later (Why that sailor was still using an Apple II, Skrenta
does not know).

...


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