On November 3, 1983, Frederick Cohen, a student at the engineering school of the University of Southern California (USC), was sure that a malicious program could be used to exploit any connected system, but he wondered how long it would take for the code to do so. He prepared a prototype that – after eight hours of hard work on a VAX 11/750 system running Unix – was ready to be shown at the weekly security seminar he attended. It was his lecturer, Leonard Adleman, who baptized that program as a computer virus. Read more about #AntimalwareDay on WeLiveSecurity.com: https://goo.gl/QCSnc5

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#AntimalwareDay
The ESET celebration of
the origins of computer defense.
30
min
It took him 8 hours to develop the program for aVAX 11/750 system
running UNIX. In less than 30 minutes the program was able to
obtain complete access and control over the infected system.
It was apparent, that the same technique will work on any other
system ...
Computer scientist
Fred Cohen created the first
computer virus* as part of a
university experiment.
He wanted to find out how
quickly it could exploit any
connected general purpose
system.
NOVEMBER 3, 1983: University of Southern California
Can the virus
repicate to other
programs?
Of course it can!
... in just half an hour.
The next
prototypes were
able to find
vulnerable files,
infect them, and
bypass user
premissions.
And this is how the term
“computer virus”
was born.
It was demonstrated that such
a virus has the potential to
spread across any system
which allows sharing.
The first computer virus as we know them today.Although there were earlier similar programs like Creeper
www.eset.com @ESET/ESET
This looks like a virus.
It is infectious and replicates.
Prof. Len Adleman
Independent of their research, viruses later began to spread. But thanks to Fred and
Len's work, the foundation of computer defense techniques were established.
By using the infected
programs, users spread
the infection to others.