Little CP relevance, except as re: a former (maybe current, but no longer actively participating) list member, so I'll be brief. At 4:24 PM 4/5/96, Michael Wilson wrote:

I ran across the following article, and it set me to wondering--did Dr. Cohen actually publish on 'computer viruses' before anybody else? He continues to use it as the bedrock of his reputation capital, so if this pre-dates his 'seminal' article, please let me know.

Included message: For Liz Bass or Reg Gale Discovery 9:31 AM Friday, April 5, 1996 By Lou Dolinar

This is still my favorite computer story. I'm not saying it was the first piece ever written about computer viruses, but I won't say that it isn't. I still have the original, dated April 16, 1985. In some ways I wish I hadn't ...

Much work was done in the 70s on "worms," which are related to viruses. John Shoch (spelling may be wrong) at Xerox PARC developed a "worm" which propagated from machine to machine, circa 1974 (give or take a year). John Brunner immortalized this in "The Shockwave Rider," his 1975 novel in which uber-hacker Nickie Halflinger uses worms to disable Big Brother's panopticon network. 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.) I will make no particular claims about how _much_ credit he deserves, as this seems petty. Nearly all discoveries have precursors, of course. The work on worms clearly was a precursor. Also, general biological work on replicating patterns was already going on, and Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" had been published in the 1970s (and I believe the work on replicating information patterns--memes--was important). His views should be taken on their merits, not on whether or not he was the first to study viruses or replicating programs in general. As it happens, I find much of what Fred Cohen writes to be tedious and repetitive, but not because he has gotten "too much" credit for his early work. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."