Elk Cloner

     Elk Cloner:  The program with a personality

        It will get on all your disks
          It will infiltrate your chips
            Yes it's Cloner!

        It will stick to you like glue
          It will modify ram too
            Send in the Cloner!

Elk Cloner was not intended to cause damage, but was created as a practical joke. According to WorldHistory.com, the adolescent Skrenta had a penchant for modifying programs so that they stopped working after some code-specified time period had elapsed, at that point displaying some joke text that Skrenta had written. Not surprisingly, the young programmer's friends grew leery of allowing him access to their diskettes. Elk Cloner's capacity to copy itself (the major criterion of a virus) made it possible for Skrenta to continue to annoy his friends without requiring physical access. The virus is reported to have spread widely among his fellow students (and also to his math teacher), thus ensuring Elk Cloner's place in history.

Read more about Elk Cloner: - WorldHistory.com has more information about Elk Cloner. - Skrenta's old newsgroup post contains further details. - Wikipedia offers a timeline of notable computer viruses and worms.

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