Creeperconsidering the first example of malwarewas developed in 1971 not with malicious intent, but as experiment to test the potential of self-replicating programsIt was developed by Bob Thomasengineer of the BBN Technologiesone of the companies he created and developed ARPANETthe computer network from which the Internet originated in 1983. To cancel out the effects of Creeper, in 1972 a Reaperconsidered to all intents and purposes the first cybersecurity software.
How Creeper, the first worm in history, was born
The first malware in history saw the light in 1971 at BBN Technologiesa Cambridge-based company that played a crucial role in the development of computer networks, in particular ARPANETthe ancestor of the Internet. Bob Thomasone of the company’s engineers, wanted demonstrate the possibility of creating a program capable of moving autonomously between connected computers. At the time, the PDP-10 computers from the DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) were among the most popular and used an operating system called TENEXon which Thomas decided to conduct his experiment.
The program Creeper was not meant to cause harm. It did not delete data or take control of the system: it simply replicated itself, going from one computer to another and outputting a message that read: «I’M THE CREEPER. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!». This message, which playfully invited the user to “get” Creeper, was all that the user saw on his terminal before the worm moved to another system.
Although Creeper was not destructive, its existence posed an important question: how could it be removed? The answer to this question was, Raymond Samuel Tomlinsonanother engineer of the BBN Technologies (known for inventing the @ symbol in email), which in 1972 development Reapera program designed to detect and delete Creeper from systems infected by it. In fact, it was Reaper, not Creeper, that was able to send a copy of its code to other computers. Given its ability to eradicate Creeper, Reaper can be considered the first antimalware in historymarking the beginning of the hunt for cyber threats, a hunt that continues to this day.
Creeper is not the first computer virus
We conclude with a necessary clarification. In the article we referred to Creeper as the first malware in computing. But in reality malware generally refers to all the countless types of malicious software. To go into more detail, in fact, Creeper can be technically considered a worma type of malware that has the ability to self-replicate. In light of this specification, therefore, It would be technically incorrect to call Creeper the first virus computer scientist. This is because the computer virusesalthough they also belong to the malware family (like worms), once executed they go to infect files so as to make copies of themselves.
For the record, the first computer virus was developed about a decade later than Creeper (specifically in 1982), it was called Elk Clonerwas developed by the 15-year-old Richard Skrenta and infected the operating system Apple-DOS of theApple II. But that’s a whole other story.
