TOPIC: Computer History - The Virus
In his doctoral dissertation, Fred Cohen formally defined a computer virus as “a computer program that can affect other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a copy of itself.”
Computer virus predecessors had shown up in the 1960s, the first being a memory saturating program called Core Wars. A program called Elk Cloner, written for Apple II systems in 1982, is believed to be the first computer-spreading virus. The first IBM-PC virus is the Brain virus, which appeared in 1986.
Since that time, literally tens of thousands of viruses have been written -- and released on unsuspecting computer users. If you own a home PC or laptop, you shouldn't be without a suite of security products, including anti-virus, firewall, adware killers and even wi-fi protection. I recommend getting something like McAfee Internet Security Suite 2006, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 or AntiSpyware/Personal Firewall/QuickClean 2006. At the very least, get a malware killer like Webroot Spy Sweeper v5! And ALWAYS practice safe hex!