The history of antivirus software is a saga that spans from experimental pranks to multi-billion dollar industries and high-stakes international intrigue.
In the early 1970s, the world's first "virus," known as Creeper , began jumping between computers on the ARPANET (the internet's precursor). It was harmless, merely displaying the message: "I'm the creeper: catch me if you can." In response, a programmer named Bob Thomas (or potentially Ray Tomlinson) created Reaper, the first antivirus, designed solely to hunt down and delete Creeper [17]. Antivirus
: Early tools scanned for specific "signatures" (digital fingerprints), but modern versions now use heuristic detection to analyze suspicious behavior and catch previously unseen "zero-day" threats [5.1, 5.7]. The history of antivirus software is a saga