In the times that run we can find complex malicious code that can affect all types of devices, systems and platforms. However, malware has been advancing over time, in the past we found much simpler viruses, although they were also dangerous.
Everything related to security is one of the issues that most concerns both users and companies related to technology. Even more if we take into consideration that the majority use or work with highly sensitive data online. Attackers lurk across all sorts of software and platforms to steal from us in one way or another. The amount of malware that is lurking to enter our devices is innumerable.
But even this type of dangerous software has a past, as we are going to tell you about below. In fact, last century, when the year was 1971, the Internet still had nothing to do with what it is now. The equipment of some users and through its predecessor, known as Arpanet, began to receive a strange message. As with current viruses, this is an appearance that those affected did not initially expect. A message would appear on the victims’ screens saying something like I’m a creeper, catch me if you can.
How was the first virus in history
Obviously this type of technology, at that time very advanced, was just beginning. That is why computer users were not as accustomed to this kind of strange stuff as we are now. In reality, this small piece of software did not do any harm to the affected computers, it just displayed the message that we mentioned. This was produced by a program called Creeper that over time became known as the first virus in history.
Of course, while many of today’s viruses can cause real havoc between our operating systems and computers, this first virus did nothing. Actually, it was not malicious at all and its main objective was to replicate itself to pass from one computer to another using the aforementioned network of the moment. This little program did not want to hurt, it was just an experiment by an engineer who wanted to show that he was capable of passing that message from one computer to another.
Therefore, taking into consideration that Creeper did no harm to computers those it reached, some do not even consider it a virus. Its main objective was just to display a message on the screen when it reached let’s say infected devices. The piece of software was then duplicated and transmitted to the next computer on the network. Of course, the program was previously removed from the original PC where the message had just been printed.
With everything and with it due to this method of action, although it was not harmful for the PC, for the majority it is considered as the first computer virus in history.
So what was the first real virus?
At the same time, it took a few years for us to come across the first virus that was really dangerous, considered as such in all of history. Known as Rabbit , this was indeed a malicious code that replicated indefinitely on a computer itself in order to harm the user and even crash the computer completely. It must be taken into account that at that time we were working with computers that were quite limited in terms of their hardware, so this virus could do a lot of damage after it arrived, blocking the computer completely.
Later on, and as many of you will already know first-hand, malware has been gaining in complexity and number until it has become one of the biggest problems in computing for years, something that still affects us today. Of course, for that we have the current powerful antivirus.
