Here’s something that I didn’t know until someone helpfully pointed it out to me: the term computer virus is 30 years old this year. Actually, according to Wikipedia, they were slightly off as it’s actually 29 years old because the paper, Computer Viruses – Theory and Experiments (by Fred Cohen from the University of Southern California), was written in 1984.
Thanks to Wikipedia, I have since learned that, irrespective of when the term ‘computer virus’ was coined, the first academic work on the theory of computer viruses was presented in lectures at the University of Illinois by John von Neumann in 1949. And in 1972, an article by Veith Risak described a fully functional virus written in assembler language for a Siemens 4004/35 computer system. For those of you interested, there is some fascinating stuff on Wikipedia about the first occurrence of computer viruses in science fiction and also the first instances of real ones (which emerged before Cohen’s paper).
In any case, who would have thought back in 1984 that the computer virus which, incidentally, wasn’t necessarily defined as malevolent, could develop into such a big deal and create work and revenue not only for virus creators but for those working to negate their effects?
And what a rich seam the computer virus has proved to be. For virus writers, the opportunities have increased exponentially as the computer industry has grown and diversified over the years. That virus outlined by Risak in 1972 might have affected only a handful of computers but now that we have PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones and the Internet, the potential opportunity for a virus (or any other type of malware) is magnified a millionfold, if not more.
The diversity of devices and the amazing broadening of their usage (extending beyond government and big business in the 70s to pretty much every business and the vast majority of households today) has also led to the spectacularly rapid evolution from computer virus to a multiplicity of types of malware and security threats. This led to a significant increase in revenue opportunity for people working on the shadow side of IT security and, at the same time, to a growing level of specialisation in terms of the nature of the threat they choose to create and the platform it is delivered to.
Industrial revolution
Meanwhile, as the dark side has been busy generating revenue and creating jobs of its own, it has led to the creation of a massive IT security industry geared to trying to negate the threats it presents. And what an industry that has become, spreading across every device and platform you can conceive of. Even during the tough times of recent years, it has not been uncommon for people working in the security industry to say something like "well, whatever decisions people make about their IT spend, security is something they can’t live without".
Looked at purely from a revenue point of view, the computer virus and its descendants have been a success story for their creators and propagators. From a channel point of view, while viruses and malware are deplorable, their existence and the threat they present have generated another opportunity for customer engagement and helped to create additional revenue streams.
There’s been an almost symbiotic relationship between creators and destroyers except, in this instance, the creators are the bad guys and the destroyers the good guys. Sometimes, the creators defect to the side of the destroyers (and I’m sure there are times when good guys go rogue). The criminal element has helped to fuel a large part of the growth of the malware industry and the security industry but there are also aspects of cyber warfare that involve governments. In a strange way, the opening of this latest (virtual) front in the conflict between nations is a return to the earliest times of computer viruses when the likeliest targets were large systems housed in government departments rather than a PC in someone’s kitchen.
From humble beginnings the ‘computer virus’ has evolved into a shadow or mirror industry (a parallel universe even) as the IT universe has expanded. That might sound like the set up for a dodgy 70s science fiction film with minimal production values and cheap and cheerful special effects, but it’s actually a hugely successful blockbuster.
Yet, when we strip it down to its bare essentials, the computer virus and the ecosystem it has created, like most space age blockbusters, is merely another expression of human motivation and behaviour with added special effects. Viruses and malware are malevolent or criminal purely because people make them so. They represent another sphere for the human criminal instinct to manifest itself in but they do not replace it. When you think of it in those terms, it’s a lot, lot older than 29, 30 or even 51 years old.
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