Elk Cloner
| Elk Cloner | |
|---|---|
| Surname | Elk Cloner |
| Known since | 1982 |
| First location | United States |
| Virus type | Boot sector virus |
| Authors | Rich Skrenta |
| Host files | Boot sectors |
| Polymorph | No |
| Stealth | No |
| Memory resident | Yes |
| system | Apple II with Apple DOS |
| programming language | Assembler |
| info | First known computer virus |
Elk Cloner is a boot sector virus and is considered to be the first known computer virus .
The virus was written around 1982 by the then 15-year-old US student Rich Skrenta for the Apple II , who practically went down in the history of computer science as the inventor of the computer virus.
Elk Clone was not only well known in specialist circles, but was also discussed in public. For example, the virus was reported in Time magazine.
Function and distribution
The virus was a boot sector virus and spread through the boot sector of infected floppy disks . If the computer started from an infected floppy disk, the virus would write itself to memory, and if uninfected floppy disks were inserted into the drive, the virus would write itself onto the floppy disks in order to spread further.
Payload
The following text appears for every 50th disk that is inserted into the Apple II drive:
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!
The computer had to be restarted to continue using it. Otherwise nothing was damaged, only Apple DOS disks, which were not based on the standard image, were overwritten.