Computer Virus Turns 40
March 15 marks the 40th birthday of the world's first computer virus. The first virus was created in 1971 and given the name Creeper. The Creeper was not a very dangerous virus, as it's most noticeable side effect was a display message that read "I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!" However, this innocuous virus was the beginning of a digital war that we are living today, where software companies work furiously to plug the holes in their OS while virus creators are equally diligent in finding new ways to exploit them.
But this war is about more than simple exploitation, because it is also a numbers game. Viruses have grown exponentially from around 1300 in 1990 to over 200 million on the web today. The nature of these viruses has also been changing over time, as the earlier ones were mostly an annoyance, while modern viruses are being designed to enable criminal activity like identity theft or creating a botnet.