The First computer which appeared "in the wild"
A Computer Virus is a computer program that can spread from one computer to another and can also replicate itself.
According to computer experts, in order for a virus to be considered "in the wild" , it must be spreading as a result of normal day-to-day operations on and between the computers of unsuspecting users. Although there are an estimated 47,000 computer viruses, fewer than 600 are said to be circulating outside of laboratories and research facilities- hence, in the wild. These wild viruses pose the most significant threat to computers.
Wild viruses typically contain a damaging payload and the ability to wipe out all computer files, sometimes even damaging a computer's BIOS.
On Apple OS platform.
"Elk Cloner" is the first known personal computer self-replicating virus that spread "in the wild" and was designed to target Apple computer.
The Elk Cloner virus was created in 1982 by a 15 year old high school student named Rich Skrenta, who was in 9th grade at that time. He had a precocious ability in programming and an overwhelming interest in computer.
The virus was initially created as a joke and was only meant to be part of a game.
Elk Cloner spread on the Apple II operating system using a technique now known as "boot sector virus".( the virus that affected a machine during its boot-up process.)
The virus spread through floppy disks, which were very popular at that time. If an Apple II booted from an infected floppy disk, the virus resident in the computer's memory. The infected computer would display a short poem on screen on every 50th boot from an infected disk.
Elk Cloner did not cause deliberate harm, but managed to spread widely. Making the first computer virus to spread "in the wild".
On Microsoft OS platform.
After a gap of 4years the first IBM PC, self cloning virus "Brain" which too spread "in the wild" was created in 1986
Brain is the industry standard name of a computer virus that was released in its form in January 1986 and is considered to be the first computer virus for MS-DOS, the boot sector virus.
Brain was written by two Pakistani brothers, Basit Farooq Alvi and Amjad Farooq Alvi, from Lahore, Pakistan. They told TIME magazine that they had written it to protect their medical software from piracy, and it would target copyright infringers only.
Brain affected the IBM PC computer by replacing the boost sector of a floppy disk with a copy of the virus. The real boot sector was moved to another sector and marked as bad. Infected disk usually have 5 kilobytes of bad sectors..
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| The boot sector of the infected floppy |
This tracking program was supposed to stop and track illegal copies of the disk.
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