The Science Quiz | Computer viruses

Questions:

1. On January 30, 1982, computer programmer Richard Skrenta wrote the world’s first computer virus that ‘escaped’ to other networks. Among other things, the virus would display a poem about itself every 50th time a programme containing it was run. Name the virus.

2. What was the first virus of the original IBM Personal Computer called? Released on January 19, 1986, it was the brainchild of Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Alvi, who lived in Lahore, Pakistan, at the time.

3. What is the name for computer code that mutates its algorithm every time it is run, but such that every mutation keeps the algorithm’s function intact? This ability challenged virus scanners when it first emerged.

4. Following on from Q4, some viruses are also able to completely rewrite their own code to alter rather than preserve its function and thus infect new targets. What is such code called?

5. Name the computer worm believed to have been created in 2005 and discovered in 2010, and which has been blamed for significantly disrupting Iran’s nuclear programme by damaging the centrifuges.

Visual:

Name this Hungarian and American scientist who, in a 1949 lecture, broached the idea of self-replicating computer programs, which viruses later came to be.

Answers:

1. Elk Cloner

2. Brain

3. Polymorphic code

4. Metamorphic code

5. Stuxnet

Visual: John von Neumann