Cisco Security Agent

The Early Days: Viruses and Worms

This section explores the initiation and evolution of the automated attack against computing infrastructures, including early virus and worm behavior and the drivers shaping these behaviors.

Virus Emergence and Early Propagation Methods

The concept of the computer worm or virus is not new. Those who created early computing machines conceived of malicious code or data nearly concurrently with their hardware discoveries. Early researchers used such code in elaborate games such as Core Wars in attempts to learn more about computing and how unexpected interaction between processes affects the computing environment.

The computer virus really started to have an effect at the onset of early business and consumer networking. ...