The Creeper from the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode Jeepers, It’s the Creeper.
The first recognized computer virus, Creeper, was created in 1971 by Bob Thomas as an experiment. Though developed in a lab, it was accidentally released onto the Internet, or ARPANET as it was known back then. When it found a compatible host computer it would install itself and print the message, “I’m the Creeper, catch me if you can!” It would then begin printing a file. Before it finished it would move to its next victim while removing itself from the previous. It didn’t do anything inherently malicious or dangerous. It was just annoying.
Consequently, Creeper gave rise to the first antivirus, which was named Reaper. Reaper’s only job was to watch for Creeper and remove it before it could run or spread.
More interesting if not useless trivia…
Software purists reading this will note that technically Creeper was a worm and not a virus. Like a biological virus, a computer virus replicates itself to a new host while remaining on the original host. A worm moves from one host to another, not leaving a copy of itself behind. Interestingly, the concept driving Thomas’ experiment was first theorized by John von Neumann way back in the late 1940s. That’s the same von Neumann who was the renowned mathematician/physicist working on the Manhattan Project, father of Game Theory, contributor to the development of the ENIAC, and creator of the von Neumann Computer Architecture, which is still in use today, just to name a few accomplishments.
On the lighter side, it may be a coincidence, but both Creeper and [Grim] Reaper were Scooby Doo characters. Hmm…
