Elk Cloner - wikipedia Elk Cloner Elk Cloner Common name Elk Cloner Classification Computer virus Type Apple II series Subtype Boot sector virus Isolation 1982 Point of isolation Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, United States Point of origin Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, United States Author ( s ) Rich Skrenta Elk Cloner is one of the first known microcomputer viruses that spread `` in the wild '', i.e., outside the computer system or laboratory in which it was written. It attached itself to the Apple II operating system and spread by floppy disk. It was written around 1982 by programmer and entrepreneur Rich Skrenta as a 15 - year - old high school student, originally as a joke, and put onto a game disk. Contents 1 Infection and symptoms 2 Development 3 Distribution 4 References 5 External links Infection and symptoms Elk Cloner spread by infecting the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system using a technique now known as a boot sector virus. It was attached to a game, the game was then set to play. The 50th time the game was started, the virus was released, but instead of playing the game, it would change to a blank screen that displayed a poem about the virus named Elk Cloner. If a computer booted from an infected floppy disk, a copy of the virus was placed in the computer 's memory. When an uninfected disk was inserted into the computer, the entire DOS ( including Elk Cloner ) would be copied to the disk, allowing it to spread from disk to disk. To prevent the DOS from being continually re-written each time the disk was accessed, Elk Cloner also wrote a signature byte to the disk 's directory, indicating that it had already been infected. The poem that Elk Cloner would display was as follows : 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 did not cause deliberate harm, but Apple DOS disks without a standard image had their reserved tracks overwritten. Development Elk Cloner was created by Skrenta as a prank in 1982. Skrenta already had a reputation for pranks among his friends because, in sharing computer games and software, he would often alter the floppy disks to shut down or display taunting on - screen messages. Due to this reputation, many of his friends simply stopped accepting floppy disks from him. Skrenta thought of methods to alter floppy disks without physically touching or harming them. During a winter break from Mt. Lebanon High School in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Skrenta discovered how to launch the messages automatically on his Apple II computer. He developed what is now known as a boot sector virus, and began circulating it in early 1982 among high school friends and a local computer club. Twenty - five years later in 2007, Skrenta called it `` some dumb little practical joke. '' Distribution This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( January 2017 ) According to contemporary reports, the virus was rather contagious, successfully infecting the floppies of most people Skrenta knew, and upsetting many of them. Part of the `` success '', of course, was that people were not at all wary of the potential problem, nor were virus scanners or cleaners available. The virus could be removed using Apple 's MASTER CREATE utility or other utilities to re-write a fresh copy of DOS to the infected disk. Furthermore, once Elk Cloner was removed, the previously - infected disk would not be re-infected since it already contained the Elk Cloner `` signature '' in its directory. It was also possible to `` inoculate '' uninfected disks against Elk Cloner by writing the `` signature '' to the disk ; the virus would then think the disk was already infected and refrain from writing itself. References Jump up ^ Associated Press. `` Prank starts 25 years of computer security woes ''. CTV. Archived from the original on 2008 - 01 - 07. Jump up ^ `` Elk Cloner ''. Retrieved 2010 - 12 - 10. Jump up ^ `` Top 10 Computer Viruses : No. 10 - Elk Cloner ''. Retrieved 2010 - 12 - 10. Jump up ^ `` List of Computer Viruses Developed in 1980s ''. Retrieved 2010 - 12 - 10. Jump up ^ Top ten worst viruses Jump up ^ `` First virus hatched as a practical joke ''. The Sydney Morning Herald. 2007 - 09 - 03. Jump up ^ The computer virus turns 25 Salon.com Retrieved April 12, 2013. Jump up ^ A 20 - year plague CNET News.com Jump up ^ A History of Viruses Jump up ^ `` Computer Recreations : A Core War bestiary of viruses, worms and other threats to computer memories ''. Retrieved 2015 - 03 - 22. External links Elk Cloner ( circa 1982 ) Hacking in the 1980s Malware 1260 Brain Byte Bandit Cascade Christmas Tree EXEC Elk Cloner Father Christmas Ghostball Jerusalem Lamer Exterminator Morris worm Ping - Pong SCA Scores Stoned Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elk_Cloner&oldid=801436199 '' Categories : Hacking in the 1980s Computer viruses 1982 in Pennsylvania Hidden categories : Articles needing additional references from January 2017 All articles needing additional references Talk Contents About Wikipedia Deutsch Español Bahasa Indonesia Íslenska Italiano Lumbaart Nederlands Português Русский Svenska Türkçe 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 19 September 2017, at 17 : 25. About Wikipedia

Question: who wrote the first computer virus called elk cloner
Answer: Rich Skrenta