Computer viruses celebrate the 40th anniversary

In March 1971, the Creeper program, capable of moving independently from one computer to another, appeared in the prototype of the modern Internet, the American network ARPANET.

Strictly speaking, Creeper was not a computer virus in the modern sense of the term - as a program capable of independent reproduction. Its creator, engineer Bob Thomas (Bob Thomas), simply tried to write a program that could “move” between computers by itself, without assuming that in this way any damage could be done. Unlike computer viruses and worms created later, Creeper deleted its copy from the system when moving to a new computer.

Getting on a new car, the program displayed the message “I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!” And immediately tried to move further. Creeper worked on DEC PDP-10 computers with the TENEX operating system. These very large-sized, by modern standards, computers were widely used in computer centers at various research organizations of the time.
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Original article:
www.rian.ru/science/20110316/354626346.html

Additional Information:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeper_virus