The Logbook: The story of the first viral computer virus

Computer viruses in the earlier days of the Internet were wildly different and much milder than they are in the modern computing era. The title of the first computer virus created is often given to the Creeper Virus, which was developed in 1971 during the ARPANET era and was used for experimental purposes rather than malicious ones. Because there was no unified Internet when the Creeper Virus was created, it was contained and prevented from spreading in the wild. Then came the Elk Cloner.

The Elk Cloner, which infected computers through a floppy disk, was the first viral computer virus. It was created by then high-school student Rich Skrenta in 1982.