Doug’s Dynamic Drivel

Examining the detritus of modern society

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Just for the Elk of it

22 June, 2004 (16:16) | Computer

Mac users like to heap scorn on Windows users for the large amount of viruses that attack computers running Windows (completey forgetting of course that they are such a miniscule percentage of the desktops and servers out there that it simply isn’t worth the time or efforst of a virus writer to focus on them). however, it is worthwhile remembering that the very first virus to spread in the wild was the Elk Cloner virus

Elk Cloner was the first computer virus known to have spread in the wild. Richard Skrenta, then fifteen years old, wrote the virus for the Apple II operating system, which was stored on floppy diskettes. When a computer booted from a floppy disk infected with Elk Cloner, the virus would start, and would subsequently copy itself to any uninfected floppy disk that was accessed. Because computers of that time had dual floppy disk drives, and because diskettes were often passed around among friends, the virus was frequently copied.

Now ask yourself why was it written for the Apple? Well because at that time Apple was selling more PCs than Windows - this was 1982, he was 15 and he wrote an annoying but harmless virus and the first IBM PC had been released only a few months earlier in August 1981. At this point in time Apple was king in the PC world so it’s what was targeted.

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes it’s Cloner!

It will stick to you like glue
It will modify ram too
Send in the Cloner!

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