NPR Weekend Edition Saturday: A virus anniversary

Scott Simon interviewed a senior editor at Wired magazine about the first computer virus, and the state of viruses today.

Weekend Edition Saturday, January 20, 2007 · More than 20 years ago this week the first computer virus was found. Since then viruses and the people who write them have changed significantly.

Nicholas Thompson, a senior editor at Wired magazine, talks with Scott Simon about the changes.

Here's my summary of Thompson's comments:

-The "Brain" virus struck 21 years ago. It infected the boot sector of floppy disks. It prevented computers from booting up.
-Major viruses that cause big damage are a little less common today. The heyday of viruses was 5 or 6 years ago. Now people are more likely to get their thrills from BitTorrent, downloading movies and other "dark, dangerous" things online. The bad activity now is enslaving people's machines for nefarious purposes, rather than destroying them. It's no longer cool to be the guy who writes a virus that clogs computers of millions of people.
-Cell phone viruses are much harder to spread. There have been no bad cell phone viruses yet. But concern is building.

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"The bad activity now is enslaving people's machines for nefarious purposes, rather than destroying them."

While the wording made me laugh, man, that is *such* a pain. It is basically background exploitation of computer resources and it drives users mad.