Computer virus

[Potatoman]

What was the first computer virus and what did it do to peoples systems?

[yellowjohn]

The common story is that two brothers from Pakistan analyzed the boot sector of a floppy disk and developed a method of infecting it with a virus dubbed "Brain" (the origin is generally accepted but not absolutely). Because it spread widely on the popular MS-DOS PC system this is typically called the first computer virus; even though it was predated by Cohen's experiments and the Apple II virus. That same year the first PC-based Trojan was released in the form of the popular shareware program PC-Write. Some reports say Virdem was also found this year; it is often called the first file virus

[yellowjohn]

sorry forgot to say it was in 1986. although there were a few experimental viruses in previous years.

[jake-the-peg]

The first worm happened 2 years later

http://world.std.com/~franl/worm.html

[Cockney_si]

I think one of the first (if not the first ) computer viruses was called ambulance and it featured an (very blockily drawn! ) ambulance driving ionto the screen and supposedly messing up the system.

However, the coding was so full of bugs the virus would usually stop working half way through....