Like hackers who delight in breaking into other people's computer networks, virus writers have traditionally been described as immature and antisocial. Viruses, Viruses Everywhere Viruses, which attach themselves to innocent programs to infiltrate and damage a machine or a network, have been around since 1983, when Fred Cohen wrote a purely experimental virus at the University of Southern California.
Security experts say hoax messages pose at least as great a danger as viruses themselves.
Since late 1986, these viruses have caused damage estimated at millions of dollars, including serious destruction of data. At least 12,000 viruses have been written thus far, though only a handful are currently in circulation and causing damage. There are also hoax messages, which falsely warn that viruses are attached to innocuous programs. Security experts say these pose at least as great a danger as viruses themselves. He says he learned Assembly programming because he wanted to code viruses and graphics demos.