Re: Was Cohen the first?

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