[53298] in Cypherpunks
Re: Was Cohen the first?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Fri Apr 5 18:18:25 1996
To: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Cc: cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 05 Apr 1996 13:38:16 PST."
<ad8abb671e021004df37@[205.199.118.202]>
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 1996 17:36:00 -0500
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Timothy C. May writes:
> Having said this, Fred Cohen deserves credit for seriously studying
> properties of replicating programs, including viruses. (And I believe he
> coined the term virus, and also showed how it differs from a worm.)
Fred Cohen did not coin the term. "The Shockwave Rider" explicitly
refers to viruses in addition to worms -- indeed, the main character
at several points uses a "phage" (i.e. a virus) to eliminate
information about himself from the global communications
network. Other people used the term "virus" in a number of similar
contexts long before Fred Cohen.
Perry
