Reaper (program)

Last updated

Reaper
Original author(s) Ray Tomlinson
Initial release1972
Operating system TENEX

Reaper was the first anti-virus software. It was created by Ray Tomlinson to move across the ARPANET and delete the transmitting Creeper program. [1] Creeper had been an experimental computer program originally written by Bob Thomas at BBN in 1971. [2] Its original iteration was designed to move between DEC PDP-10 mainframe computers running the TENEX operating system using the ARPANET. A later version by Ray Tomlinson designed to copy itself between computers rather than simply move, thus making Ray Tomlinson the father of the computer worm. [1]

Creeper was not malicious but was the first example of a computer worm. [3] [4] The only effect being a message it output to the teletype reading "I'm the creeper: catch me if you can". [4] Strictly speaking, the second worm introduced on ARPANET was Reaper as it was a worm, meant to delete any instances of Creeper that it could find. [1]

Related Research Articles

Computer worm Malware

A computer worm is a standalone malware computer program that replicates itself in order to spread to other computers. It often uses a computer network to spread itself, relying on security failures on the target computer to access it. It will use this machine as a host to scan and infect other computers. When these new worm-invaded computers are controlled, the worm will continue to scan and infect other computers using these computers as hosts, and this behaviour will continue. Computer worms use recursive methods to copy themselves without host programs and distribute themselves based on the law of exponential growth, thus controlling and infecting more and more computers in a short time. Worms almost always cause at least some harm to the network, even if only by consuming bandwidth, whereas viruses almost always corrupt or modify files on a targeted computer.

Malware A portmanteau for malicious software

Malware is any software intentionally designed to cause damage to a computer, server, client, or computer network. A wide variety of malware types exist, including computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, ransomware, spyware, adware, rogue software, wiper and scareware.

The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988, was one of the first computer worms distributed via the Internet, and the first to gain significant mainstream media attention. It also resulted in the first felony conviction in the US under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It was written by a graduate student at Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris, and launched on November 2, 1988, from the computer systems of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Timeline of computer viruses and worms computer malware timeline

This timeline of computer viruses and worms presents a chronological timeline of noteworthy computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, similar malware, related research and events.

The end-to-end principle is a design framework in computer networking. In networks designed according to this principle, application-specific features reside in the communicating end nodes of the network, rather than in intermediary nodes, such as gateways and routers, that exist to establish the network.

BBN Technologies was an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.

ARPANET Early packet switching network that was one of the first to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switching network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. The ARPANET was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense.

Antivirus software Computer software to defend against malicious computer viruses

Antivirus software, or anti-virus software, also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware.

The compilation of a unified list of computer viruses is made difficult because of naming. To aid the fight against computer viruses and other types of malicious software, many security advisory organizations and developers of anti-virus software compile and publish lists of viruses. When a new virus appears, the rush begins to identify and understand it as well as develop appropriate counter-measures to stop its propagation. Along the way, a name is attached to the virus. As the developers of anti-virus software compete partly based on how quickly they react to the new threat, they usually study and name the viruses independently. By the time the virus is identified, many names denote the same virus.

Ray Tomlinson American computer programmer

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson was a pioneering American computer programmer who implemented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971; he is internationally known and credited as the inventor of email. It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer. To achieve this, he used the @ sign to separate the user name from the name of their machine, a scheme which has been used in email addresses ever since. The Internet Hall of Fame in its account of his work commented "Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate".

Daniel L. Murphy is an American computer scientist notable for his involvement in the development of TECO, the operating systems TENEX and TOPS-20, and email.

The WANK Worm was a computer worm that attacked DEC VMS computers in 1989 over the DECnet. It was written in DIGITAL Command Language.

Computer virus Computer program that modifies other programs to replicate itself and spread

A computer virus is a type of computer program that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a computer virus.

Creeper was an experimental computer program written by Bob Thomas at BBN in 1971. Its original iteration was designed to move between DEC PDP-10 mainframe computers running the TENEX operating system using the ARPANET, with a later version by Ray Tomlinson designed to copy itself between computers rather than simply move. This self-replicating version of Creeper is generally accepted to be the first computer worm.

The Pikachu virus, sometimes referred to as Poké Virus, was a computer worm believed to be the first malware geared at children due to its incorporation of Pikachu from the Pokémon series. It was released on June 28, 2000, and arrived in the form of an email titled "Pikachu Pokemon" [sic] with the body of the e-mail containing the text "Pikachu is your friend." Opening the attached executable met users with an image of Pikachu, along with a message stating: "Between millions of people around the world I found you. Don’t forget to remember this day every time MY FRIEND." The worm itself appeared in the attachment to the email as a file named "PikachuPokemon.exe".

<i>Digital: A Love Story</i> 2010 indie visual novel

Digital: A Love Story is an indie visual novel by video game designer Christine Love, released for free in February 2010. The game's story is linear, with the player's actions unable to significantly change the course of the plot. Set "five minutes into the future of 1988", Digital tells the story of the protagonist's online relationship with a girl and their attempts to solve a mystery surrounding the deaths of several artificial intelligences. The game is presented entirely through the interface of a 1980s computer with online bulletin board system posts and messages from other characters; the protagonist's own messages are implied but never shown. The game was received positively, with critics especially praising the game's writing and plot, and it was noted in lists of the best indie games of 2010.

The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) is a new computer network architecture proposed as an alternative to the architecture of the currently mainstream Internet protocol suite. RINA's fundamental principles are that computer networking is just Inter-Process Communication or IPC, and that layering should be done based on scope/scale, with a single recurring set of protocols, rather than based on function, with specialized protocols. The protocol instances in one layer interface with the protocol instances on higher and lower layers via new concepts and entities that effectively reify networking functions currently specific to protocols like BGP, OSPF and ARP. In this way, RINA claims to support features like mobility, multihoming and Quality of Service without the need for additional specialized protocols like RTP and UDP, as well as to allow simplified network administration without the need for concepts like autonomous systems and NAT.

NPL network Historical network in England pioneering packet switching

The NPL network or NPL Data Communications Network was a local area computer network operated by a team from the National Physical Laboratory in London that pioneered the concept of packet switching.

The history of email extends over more than 50 years, entailing an evolving set of technologies and standards that culminated in the email systems in use today.

References

  1. 1 2 3 John Metcalf (2014). "Core War: Creeper & Reaper" . Retrieved 1 May 2014.
  2. Thomas Chen, Jean-Marc Robert (2004). "The Evolution of Viruses and Worms" (PDF). Retrieved 2 March 2016.
  3. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volumes 27–28. IEEE Computer Society, 2005. 74. "[...]from one machine to another led to experimentation with the Creeper program, which became the world's first computer worm: a computation that used the network to recreate itself on another node, and spread from node to node. The source code of creeper remains unknown."
  4. 1 2 From the first email to the first YouTube video: a definitive internet history. Tom Meltzer and Sarah Phillips. The Guardian . 23 October 2009