CMCDONALD@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (Chris McDonald) (02/06/89)
In response to Mr. Buck, Fred Cohen never claimed that he wrote the first virus, at least not in his PhD dissertation. Fred stated there that his faculty advisor, Leon Adelman, had coined the term "virus" during a class- room discussion on an experiment that Fred had proposed. The dissertation references earlier projects which Fred used as the rationale for his work and subsequent investigation. Both the Virus-L and RISKS Forum postings have over the years had claims that "virus" programs could be traced back to the mid 70's, if not the early 70's. The problem is two-fold: one of authenticating the claims; and one of drawing a clear distinction between virus, trojan horse, worm and bacterium. Fred's dissertation gave a very specific definition for "virus" which unfortunately is often mangled: namely, a Program that can infect other programs by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy of itself. Fred eventually received his degree and taught at Lehigh and the University of Cincinnati. He appears now to be a consultant and lecturer in the private sector. At the beginning of 1988 his thesis and another work on information protection were available from the University of Cincinnati on an inter- library loan basis. I do not know if they are still available. -------
julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Julian Cowley) (02/14/89)
In article <12468525996.9.CMCDONALD@WSMR-SIMTEL20> CMCDONALD@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL (Chris McDonald) writes: >He [Fred Cohen] appears now to be a consultant and lecturer in the private >sector. At the beginning of 1988 his thesis and another work on information >protection were available from the University of Cincinnati on an inter- >library loan basis. I do not know if they are still available. His thesis appeared in the symposium "Computer Security: A Global Challenge," proceedings of the Second IFIP International Conference on Computer Security, Toronto, Ontario, held on Sept 10-12, 1984. julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu uunet!ucsd!nosc!uhccux!julian julian@uhccux.bitnet "People who aren't amused don't talk."