Frederick B. Cohen (born 1956) is an American computer scientist and best known as the inventor of computer virus defense techniques.[2] He gave the definition of "computer virus".[3] Cohen is best known for his pioneering work on computer viruses, the invention of high-integrity operating system mechanisms now in widespread use, and automation of protection management functions.
In 1983, while a student at the University of Southern California's School of Engineering, he wrote a program for a parasitic application that seized control of computer operations, one of the first computer viruses, in Leonard Adleman’s class. He wrote a short program, as an experiment, that could "infect" computers, make copies of itself, and spread from one machine to another. It was hidden inside a larger, legitimate program, which was loaded into a computer on a floppy disk.[citation needed]
One of the few solid theoretical results in the study of computer viruses is Cohen's 1987 demonstration that there is no algorithm that can perfectly detect all possible viruses.[4]
Cohen also believed there are positive viruses and he had created one called the compression virus which spreading would infect all executable files on a computer, not to destroy, but to make them smaller.[5]
During the past 10 years[when?] of his research work, Fred Cohen wrote over 60 professional publications and 11 books.[6]
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