Formally, a piece of program code that makes copies of itself. In practice, a program or program fragment that arranges to spread from system to system without the knowledge or permission of the system owners. Much bandwidth has been wasted arguing about the difference between a computer virus and a
Computer worm; the important thing about both is that they spread, and therefore can cause orders of magnitude more trouble than a direct attack or a typical non-spreading
Trojan horse.
The term "computer virus" was first used in print by [Fred Cohen]? (currently on the Web at http://all.net/ and vicinity), in his 1985 PhD thesis. However, the first virus which escaped into the wild was "Elk Cloner", written in 1982 by [Rich Skrenta]?. See http://www.skrenta.com/ for details, including the source code.
Related topics: Computer Security, hacking
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