Question
What was the first computer virus called?

What was the first computer virus called?

Last updated: September 11, 2023

I went through a phase after seeing Hackers in 1995. It involved some AOL Instant Messages and downloading some mostly-harmless apps (mostly).

The height of my hacking career came when I got kicked off of AOL for using a hacked version of Instant Messenger that gave me access to some kind of chat room that I apparently wasn't supposed to be in (to this day I literally have no idea what the room was).

So suffice it to say, I thought I was pretty much the best hacker ever. Turns out, I just shouldn't be allowed on the internet.

I highly doubt any of the characters in Hackers would even know this one, but what was the first computer virus called?

Click START to answer.

 

The answer is: Creeper. John von Neumann was the first to theorize about the notion of a self-replicating computer program all the way back in the late '40s. But in 1971 Bob Thomas wrote the first self-replicating program that would wreak havoc on computers connected to ARPANET.Luckily all it did was display a message that said, "I'M THE CREEPER. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!" The Reaper program was developed to catch and stop Creeper, making it the first antivirus software.Source

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