Fred Cohen: Coined Term "Virus" Rich skrenta 2. Rich skrenta. Rich Skrenta. Rich Skrenta, CEO of blekko Richard "Rich" Skrenta (born 1967 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a computer programmer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who created the search engine blekko.[1] In 1982, as a high school student at Mt.
Lebanon High School, Skrenta wrote the Elk Cloner virus that infected Apple II machines. It is widely believed to be the first large-scale self-spreading personal computer virus ever created.[2] Computer virus. Computer viruses currently cause billions of dollars worth of economic damage each year,[13] due to causing systems failure, wasting computer resources, corrupting data, increasing maintenance costs, etc.
In response, free, open-source antivirus tools have been developed, and a multi-billion dollar industry of antivirus software vendors has cropped up, selling virus protection to users of various operating systems of which Android and Windows are among the most victimized. Unfortunately, no currently existing antivirus software is able to catch all computer viruses (especially new ones); computer security researchers are actively searching for new ways to enable antivirus solutions to more effectively detect emerging viruses, before they have already become widely distributed.[14] Vulnerabilities and infection vectors[edit]