A Brief History of Computer Viruses and How to Stay Safe

Unfortunately, computer viruses have gotten more and more dangerous and have even spread to mobile devices. Viruses are now able to steal larger amounts of information, such as personal or financial information. They can even infect devices to the point of malfunction where devices can’t even be used normally, or may need to be discarded. As we further trust the Internet and computers with all of our personal information, viruses and malware will only get stronger and more common.

Luckily, in today’s age you can protect yourself from most kinds of malicious threats. DFNDR’s Security Scan feature helps to monitor and protect your device from threats on its memory and SD card. Whenever you install a new app, go to a website, or even when you receive an email or text (perhaps with a suspicious link), you can run a full scan of your device in order to check for viruses and security threats. This will prevent hackers from accessing your information or delivering any potential infections to your device. Click here to run a full virus scan on your device now:

John Von Neumann gave a lecture at the University of Illinois in 1949 on the theory of self-replicating computer programs. He later had his essay published. His design for a self-replicating program is considered the first work on computer viruses. Many academics worked off of Von Neumann’s work, including Veith Risak in 1972. Veith wrote an article that went into more detail and described a virus that could work on computer technology around that time. In 1980, Jurgen Kraus wrote about how computer viruses could behave very similarly to biological viruses.

1982 marked the first year where the modern computer virus manifested itself in the way we associate and understand viruses today. “Elk Cloner” was created by a high school student and was written on a floppy disk. It would activate when the disc was used on other computers, and on its 50th activation, it would display a poem on the screen. This was the first time a computer virus would appear outside the environment it was created within. The first social networking virus, however, came about in 2001. It was known as Win32.5-0-1 and it targeted users of MSN Messenger to track IP addresses, contacts, and browser history. One thing is for certain: the malware today certainly doesn’t resemble the malware of the 20th century anymore.