I just ran into an article about the first computer virus (as we know it, anyway) was called Elk Cloner and supposedly ran on a Mac. A then ninth-grader figured out how to get his program to go from a floppy disk, hide in the RAM until another floppy was inserted, hop on for a ride, and infiltrate the next computer it was inserted into. His name is Rish Skrenta, and this is what he had to say:

It was a practical joke combined with a hack. A wonderful hack.

Back then nothing was networked. We had these computers in a lab, and there was software for them on floppy disks. You stick in the disk and run the software. Simple.

The aha moment was when I realized I could essentially get my program to move around by itself. I could give it its own motive force, by having it hide in the resident RAM of the machine between floppy changes, and hitching a ride onto the next floppy that would be inserted. Whoa. That would be cool.

Insight without implementation is worthless, so to work I went.

He was young and motivated, but he wasn’t a mean kid. Every 50 times an infected system would boot up, Elk Cloner would print this poem:

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes it’s Cloner!

It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too
Send in the Cloner!

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Tags: OS X