I’m a creeper… catch me if you can! It was the year 1971, and this message began to appear on various ARPANET computers. At that time no one had seen anything like it in the world of computing, a program that replicated itself and spread from one node to another over the network.
The program was called Creeper, and today it is considered the first computer virus in history. It was not a malicious program, and it simply traveled the web replicating itself and displaying this message wherever it went. However, it was the beginning of something, since as a direct response to the challenge it posed, the first antivirus ended up being born shortly after.
The Creeper program, was created in 1971 by Bob Thomas of BBN. The true is that Creeper was designed as a security test to see if it was possible to create a program capable of replicating itself. In a way, it was. With each new infected hard drive, Creeper tried to remove itself from the previous host computer. Creeper had no malicious intent and only displayed a simple message: “I’M THE CREEPER. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!”
However, and despite being considered the first virus in history, in practice not everyone agrees that it is defined as such. Not only because the concept of computer virus would not be born until the 80s, but because it was not intended to do harm, but to demonstrate the mobile applications of software.
Creeper might actually print a file, but then it would stop. Then he would find another computer with TENEX, establish a connection, copy himself into it, starting to show his message and erase himself from the computer he had been on, many people say that this program was the beginning of all viruses, antivirus, etc. because of what was demonstrated with this and may or may not be true.
