The year 1988 was fairly quiet, as far as virus writing went. Mostly, it was the year that anti-virus vendors started appearing, making a fuss about … [Read more...]

During 1989 things really started to move. The Fu Manchu virus (a modification of Jerusalem) was sent anonymously to a virus researcher in the UK, and … [Read more...]

By 1990, it was no longer a matter of running a couple of dozen search strings down each file. Mark Washburn had taken the Vienna virus, and created … [Read more...]

In 1991, the virus problem was sufficiently interesting to attract the large marketing companies. Symantec launched Norton Anti-Virus in December … [Read more...]

January 1992 saw the Self Mutating Engine (MtE) from Dark Avenger. At first, all we saw was a virus that we named Dedicated, but shortly after that, … [Read more...]

Early in 1993, XTREE announced that they were quitting the antivirus business. This was the first time that a major company had given up the … [Read more...]

There will be more viruses - that's an easy prediction. How many more is a difficult call, but over the last five years, the number of viruses has … [Read more...]

Narrative histories are available from several sources. Robert M. Slade's is a somewhat more technically oriented history and is available here with … [Read more...]

Viral programs have a long, and sometimes honourable, history. (I do not intend, by this statement, to be involved in the current debate about whether … [Read more...]

One of the factors involved in the success of viral programs is a study of the mindset of the user: a study of the psychology or sociology of the … [Read more...]