is one of the first known
Microcomputer Viruses that spread "in the wild," i.e., outside the computer system or lab in which it was written. It was written around 1982 by a 15-year-old high school student named
Rich Skrenta for
Apple II systems.
Elk Cloner spread by infecting the
Apple II Operating System using a technique now known as a "
Boot Sector " virus. If a computer
Boot ed from an infected
Floppy Disk , a copy of the virus was placed in the computer's
Memory . When an uninfected disk was inserted into the computer, Elk Cloner would be copied to the disk, thus allowing it to spread from disk to disk.
An infected computer would display a short
Poem on every 50th boot. Elk Cloner did not cause deliberate harm, but
Apple DOS disks without a standard image had their reserved tracks overwritten.http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/09/01/1188671795625.html The aforementioned poem follows:
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!
Elk Cloner was created in
1982 by
Rich Skrenta , a 15-year-old high school student. Skrenta was already admired by his friends because, he was illegally sharing computer games and software, he would often alter the floppy disks to shut down or display taunting on-screen messages. They became distrustful of him, so Skrenta thought of methods to alter floppy disks without physically touching them. During a winter break from the
Mt. Lebanon High School in
Pennsylvania ,
United States , Skrenta discovered how to launch the messages automatically on his
Apple II computer. He developed what is now known as a
Boot Sector virus, and began circulating it in early
1982 among high school friends and a local computer club. 25 years later in
2007 , Skrenta called it "some dumb little practical joke."http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/07/12/virus_birthday/index.htmlhttp://news.com.com/A+20-year+plague/2009-7349_3-5111410.html?tag=itemhttp://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1286
According to contemporary reports, the virus was rather contagious, successfully infecting the floppies of most people Skrenta knew (including his math teacher), and upsetting many of them (including said math teacher). Part of the "success," of course, was that people were not at all wary of the potential problem (virus infection could have been avoided by not inserting floppies into computers without hard-booting them first), nor were
Virus Scanner s or cleaners available. The virus could still be removed, but it required an elaborate manual effort.
