Worms/Viruses - what started it all

[fishern3485@cobra.uni.edu]

> : Post-posterity:
> : The original attempt at something like this was at Xerox PARC. It
> : was (I believe) called a virus at the time, because it was to infect the
> : system it was on.
> 
> : It was a small maintanence program that was supposed to run at any terminal
> : it found unattended. Its purpose was entirely beneficial. Due to a code bug,
> : it starting moving around the PARC net faster than it was suppsoed to. They
> : stomped it. When word leaked out, someone got the idea of something similar
> : doing this on purpose. Technically, it is what we'd call a worm today since
> : it travelled a net.

oddly enough, this was not even the first one.

I forget the location, but recall it was a rather large computer lab
at the time.  The computer techies had a game they played off-hours
in the computer lab.  It was designed around a circular memory system
on some form of multitasking (possibly concurrent processors) machine.
Anyway, two people would design programs whose objective was to survive
and multiply within the computer's memory

The simplest program was "Imp", whose pseudocode was something like:
COPY 0,1

All this did was copy the word it was at (the COPY 0,1 code) to the next
word.  This program just kept copying itself one step ahead and then
its execution fell through to the next copy, and it slowly plowed through
memory.

Then came Anti-Imp.
MOVE #0,-5
GO -1

This code would bomb the memory behind it, and when Imp came along, it would
get hit with a BREAK (ocode 0) instruction and die.  From here, the
programs quickly became very complex.  This little game is now known
(and played in several places) called "Core War".

Anyhow, they decided to keep this a secret, not knowing how others (and
their bosses) might react.  Some time after this, one of the guys in
this group was given an award at some dinner meeting.  He was invited
to give a speech, (in front of some reporters....) and decided to share
some "good moments" of his work, and let the game slip out.

This is the first documented use of a hostile computer program, one that
is capable of moving throughout a system and causing damage.  It's more
of a worm, but as I recall, there was an opcode to fork a coprocess,
so a "virus" of sorts could be made as well.

You described one of the *MANY* places that got ideas from these people.
Within a few MONTHS, worms and viruses were being tinkered with for
useful (and I'm sure for malicious) purposes all over the place.  And
thus it was started....      (pandora's box, eh?)

-- 
Nathan Fisher
  FISHERN3485@COBRA.UNI.EDU