CIOspeak

Did you know???

“I'M THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.”

This eerie message is the equivalent of “hello, world!” in cybersecurity history. In 1971, Bob Thomas, an engineer at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, developed the first computer worm, dubbed the “Creeper.”

Written for the Tenex operation system, the Creeper traversed the ARPANET, the precursor to the internet.

Jumping from computer to computer, the Creeper announced itself with this message and then attempted to print something. But before the printing could take place, the Creeper would jump to another machine on the ARPANET. The Creeper did not erase any files or extract any personal information.

The original Creeper was designed not to replicate itself but rather to bounce around. It wasn't designed with malicious intent; rather, Thomas was developing a resource-sharing capability that would allow users to run applications on another computer experiencing less processing load.

“Creeper moved because it could, not because it was advantageous to do so,” explained Thomas' colleague Ray Tomlinson in a 2014 interview. “It was a demo and wouldn't be very interesting if it didn't do anything.”

Reaper was clearly an answer to Creeper. Just pay attention to its name; while Creeper means “creeper”, Reaper means “pruner”. There's no reliable record of who developed Reaper. Some versions claim that it was Bob Thomas himself, while others claim that it was the work of Ray Tomlinson, the famous creator of e-mail.

The truth is that Reaper was very effective in its purpose: as soon as it detected Creeper's attack, it removed it from the system, preventing it from spreading to other computers.

Some would question Creeper's “viral” character, as it did not multiply, but travelled from one computer to another. In fact, both the concept of virus and the concept of antivirus did not exist at that time (dating back to the 1980s).