Linux Viruses and Such

• Malware Timeline (cont'd)

• 1982: John Shoch and John Hupp of Xerox PARC wrote an experimental worm program running across 100 Alto computers over ethernet. It ran amok because of a coding error, and had to be shut down.

• Nov. 3, 1983: Fred Cohen wrote an experimental virus for a VAX 11/750 running 4BSD, to present to the Nov. 10, 1983 meeting of a weekly seminar on computer security, part of the work for his doctorate at USC. Leonard Adleman, his seminar advisor, applied the term “virus” to the work, published in 1984. Virus used trojan techniques to (hypothetically) spead it: It was embedded in new debugging utility “vd”, posted on the system bulletin board.

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