【メモ帳】世界初のコンピュータウイルスも FORTRAN!?

🦠💾 A 1980 description of computer viruses. Wetherell heard the term at Livermore where Gregory Benford experimented with the earliest known virus (in Fortran, 1969).
▫️ Wetherell, Charles. "Programming Pastimes and Pleasures." Dr Dobb's Journal (Feb 1980) 36-37.@Brain0verride pic.twitter.com/REwpnyqr9z
— Core War (@xcorewar) 2020年11月15日

斯様な tweet を見かけたので検索してみました。結果、以下の様な作者本人の１０年前の記事が出てきました。

www.gregorybenford.com

So… I wrote some simple code and sent it along in my next transmission on ARPANet. Just a few lines in Fortran told the computer to attach these lines to programs being transmitted to a certain terminal. Soon the code popped up in other programs, and started propagating. By the next day it was in a lot of otherwise unrelated code, and I called a halt to matters by sending a message alerting people to the offending lines.

グレゴリー・ベンフォードの SF 読んだことありません。すみません。 J.G. バラードに煽られて内宇宙へ旅立ってしまったのでｗ