Creeper (program)

The Creeper virus emerged in the early 1970s, the ARPANET, making it one of the first computer viruses.

The ARPANET developer Bob Thomas experimented with this program, which could move within a network from one computer to own. It was written for the TENEX operating system.

This harmless but annoying Creeper experiment spread uncontrollably within a short time in TENEX entire network of the company. In infected systems the message appeared " I'M THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN" on the monitor.

Reaper program

Shortly thereafter, the Reaper program was written, which was also a virus, but a " good-natured ": It also spread through the network to find and delete the Creeper virus. To date, however, is not known who is the author and what intention he had with the virus.

Thus, the Reaper was the first anti -virus software in the world.

With today's definition of viruses of the Creeper virus nowadays would not a virus, but a worm, because it does not infect files, but only propagates itself on the network.