Back in the real world, Fred Cohen presented the first rigorous mathematical definition for a computer virus in his 1986 Ph.D. John Brunner's Shockwave Rider and Thomas Ryan's Adolescence of P-1 depicted worlds where a piece of software could transfer itself from one computer to another without detection. Strangely enough, two science-fiction books in the 1970s helped to promote the concept of a replicating program. You can read about Core Wars in the May 1984 issue of Scientific American. Bell Labs employees gave life to von Neumann's theory in the 1950s in a game they called 'Core Wars.' In this game, two programmers would unleash software 'organisms' and watch as they vied for control of the computer. The roots of the modern computer virus go back to 1949, when computer pioneer John von Neumann presented a paper on the 'Theory and Organization of Complicated Automata,' in which he postulated that a computer program could reproduce.

Rob Rosenberger is a computer consultant who maintains the Computer Virus Myths Homepage.

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