OK. I started in 1976.
Yet it took you 10 years to get around to writing a virus! Self replicating code on the virus model was the hot topic in '76. It just took a while before anybody with insufficient self-respect was able to craft a destructive virus. I was using the technique to create self updating software through the standard I/O vectors, and plenty of Creeper type viruses had been created to study the behavior. As for your idea that some viruses actually do something, by which I assume you mean do something destructive, it’s pointless. All computer viruses do is execute code. What that code does is not particularly meaningful in a computer science sense.
1977, for me.
In 1985, the year that was mentioned up-thread, sure, you could get a computer with a clock/calendar in it. Perhaps you’d put a third-party clock card in your IBM PC or XT (or Apple II), or perhaps you could afford the very expensive IBM PC-AT that already had a clock. Many people didn’t bother spending the extra money though.
You said “My PCs” in your earlier post, which suggests that the “retail toys” are the very thing under discussion.
That’s not the definition of a PC I use. Most of my equipment was custom built at the time. And by 89 my big PC was a VAX.
Anyway, I’ve just been riding sbright33 because of his claim of doing something first. He could have a perfectly good story in there somewhere with the right context and perspective on the state of the art at the time. He (or his friend) didn’t theorize the double-helix structure of DNA or anything, but there are very few stories based on monumental discoveries. Good stories come from good story telling, and almost any subject could be interesting to cover in that manner.
Still nobody has cited a virus that does something that matters,
to the user or any human!
(in the 70’s or 80’s)
In short:
Virus Do.
It is possible for text on a screen from a Virus to matter:
I sent this Email from your Lover to your Wife…
The name of the virus creator printed on the screen just doesn’t matter.
You may say that it was a gradual increase from doing absolutely nothing, to printing 3 characters on the screen, changing the DOS prompt, then 5 words, then a paragraph, making you hit a key, displaying text art, a GIF file, rebooting, erasing, encrypting, first just a small file, then your entire hard drive. In this case you’d be right, no virus was first at doing something that matters.
That is not the way it happened.
Doesn’t anyone remember?
Let me give an example so you can see what I mean. Here is one of the first viruses to do something that matters to the user:
Year:
1992
Name:
Michaelangelo
DO/did:
Overwrite the first 100 sectors of a hard disk with nulls.
Pshaw! I’m sure you were just overjoyed with these new fangled machines you were playing around with, but I had been playing with them for years before yo even saw a punch card. I installed a clock into Mr. Babbage’s difference engine. Grow some perspective on the history of computing pre-electricity before spouting off.
You may have heard of the first clockI installed. It was for the scheduler in the first ROS (Rock Operating System). A cheap Asian knock-off was later used to design the Great Wall of India.
Oh yeah well I invented.
Waiting…
Um…the 4?
Which parts of the article talk about you/your virus?
It’s right there. At the end of the sentence. Right between the word invented and the period. It was very popular just before the Big Bang. Yes, that was me!
Telling you would give away which my friend created. I don’t want your answer to be biased. Instead will you, or anyone else, attempt to answer my question? By doing so you will come to the same conclusion as if I answer yours.
It’s been 2 weeks and still nothing!
Please cite a virus that does something that matters?
To affect a human…
OTOH, it would go a long way toward easing doubts that your “friend” and this “virus” even exist.
Well, Brain is commonly accepted as the first IBM PC virus, and according to wikipedia it was released in Jan, 1986. The claim that it was an anti-piracy measure appears to be completely bogus, but it also appears that it was harmless. However, your own article contradicts this:
Now, it might be the case that the damage was unintentional, or that the Time article was wrong on this detail, but it appears that a virus created in 1985 and released in early 1986 wiped out this poor woman’s files.
By late 1987, Jerusalem was in the wild, so your claim here is that somewhere in between Brain and Jerusalem you had the first IBM PC virus that intentionally did damage. I have no refutation of that.
The only name that jumps out at my from the article is Donald Gene Burleson, who sabotaged his former employer with malicious software in 1985. But I’m not sure that counts as a virus, since I can’t find any indication that it spread anywhere.
What you seem to be claiming is that your friend created the first virus which required an anti-virus. There were anti-viruses out there already, Creeper had Reaper for instance, but it was just to cleanup, Creeper had no damaging payload, so it wasn’t necessary to remove it, just preferable to most admins. You seem to be claiming that your friend was one of the first to enable the genesis of the modern anti-virus industry. Is that what you’re saying?
Enjoy,
Steven
sbright, what are you trying to do by posting here?
If you’re looking for advice on how to be a published writer, there are probably a lot of better places on the internet than here (there are I’m sure a few published writers here, but a forum dedicated to writing would be more useful to you). There are probably enough resources out there (on-line guides and what not) that you could learn a lot just by reading, without having to ask any particular questions for quite a while.
Are you just asking if people on this board would be interested in such a book? If so, my answer is that I might be interested in reading an article, even a long one, but probably unlikely to buy a full book. And in any case, it would require a good writer to tell the story. And – I hope this is not too rude – based on your posts here, I don’t think you’ve done a whole lot of extended writing before, and frankly, think it might be a big job for you.
If your goal is just to share this interesting story, I think your best bet is to try and contact reporters who have written well about this kind of thing, and try and interest them in the story. You won’t make any money that way, but your chances of making any money off a non-fiction book are really pretty small in any case, and anyone who has the technical ability to write an early PC virus should be able to make far, far, far, more money in a technical job than as an unknown author in non-fiction.
Come on. Let’s just go thru them one at a time, chronologically or not, until we find one that DOES SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT or malicious. Let’s not include non-virus software with a bug that might crash or corrupt a disk.
The Brain, might corrupt the boot sector, I don’t know, but no user data is effected. It is extremely easy to fix without any special skills by the user.
If you want to write a book that people will be interested in reading then you need to learn to focus on the details people want to know about and not harp on about minutiea that no one else is interested it. Forget proving you were the first to create a damage causing, memory resident, PC virus while wearing a red shirt, standing on one leg and humming the theme song to Gilligan’s Island, because that bit makes everyone’s eyes glaze over.