The First Computer Virus

The first computer virus came to the light about twenty five years ago. It infected the Apple II computers through the floppy discs and was named the Elk Cloner.

It was also created by some high school kid in Pittsburgh. That virus was more irritating that devastating but it did set the trail for future versions of viruses that are seen today.

The first viruses were more of a joke with computer geeks seeing just how far they could push the system. Today it is criminal hackers with ulterior motives that entice them to infect systems and websites globally.

During the past ten years computer viruses have exploded and are wreaking havoc daily in the lives of personal home computers to worldwide corporate systems. Malware, which is malicious software, affects everyone who has a computer and uses the Internet. Corruption from malware costs billions of dollars annually in loss of profits and fraud. Viruses, worms, or malware copy itself as an attachment with the intention of hopefully crashing your computer system but also enjoys monitoring keystrokes which easily allows for detection of Social Security numbers and other information that you do not want anyone else to have.

Newer malware is created with the intention of financial fraud and so it lurks and sucks out as much information as it can, often going undetected until it is too late. As more and more electronic devices are able to link themselves to the computer, the problem will continue to not only grow, but flourish. The simple truth is that the computer viruses of today are much more sophisticated. You can infest your computer without doing a single thing, not opening an attachment, an email, nothing at all.

A newer form of computer corruption is combined virus attacks. First, the virus has to get into your computer which does not take too much effort whatsoever as it can easily enter through corrupt websites or malicious email. Once it is there the virus unleashes a corrupt code onto your computer which is not even detectable by any antivirus programs. It just sits there, harmless, because it is waiting on its partners to come in and give him a hand in hopes of completely crashing your computer system. While that piece is just sitting there, a second one arrives in a very similar fashion as the first. Now there are two corrupt codes hanging around just waiting for the reinforcements to arrive. The table is being set at this point but nothing has been executed yet.

Reinforcements finally arrive and you will never guess who they are, Microsoft! Computer hackers take advantage of the few bugs that Microsoft programmers did not locate and use them to their advantage by locating them and making Microsoft's Internet Explorer do things that they are not intended to do such as wake up those corrupt codes that were just hanging around. Now, you have an uninvited guest who has plans that you know nothing about like taking over your administrative privileges, check out all of your files, possibly changing them or sending them off to someone else, or even worse, erasing the whole file content.