Redazione RHC : 9 July 2025 11:31
It’s not uncommon to find references to information technology innovations in video games.
Ada Lovelace (the first programmer in history), gave her name to the robot in Folsom 4, but the famous Creeper, the Minecraft monster, also takes its name from the first computer worm in history, which we’ll talk about today, in this article.
But today we’ll also discover Reaper, the software created to eliminate infections created by Reaper, considered by many to be the first antivirus software in history.
The most important characteristic of a computer virus is its ability to self-replicate (in a sense, any self-replicating program can be called a virus).
The idea of self-replicating programs can be traced back to 1949, when the mathematician John von Neumann envisioned specialized computers, or self-replicating automata, that could build copies of themselves and transmit their programming to their offspring.
Mathematician and computer science pioneer John von Neumann
If a computer virus has the ability to self-replicate on a computer network, such as the Internet, it is called a worm.
It is not known who created the world’s first self-replicating program, but it is clear that the world’s first worm (the so-called Creeper worm) was created by BBN engineer Robert (Bob) H. Thomas around 1970.
BBN Technologies (originally Bolt, Beranek, and Newman) was a high-tech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that played a critical role in the development of packet-switched networks (including ARPANET and the Internet).
A number of well-known computer luminaries worked at BBN, including Robert Kahn, J. C. R. Licklider, Marvin Minsky, Ray Tomlinson, etc. Among them was researcher Robert H. (Bob) Thomas, who worked in a small group of programmers developing a time-sharing system called TENEX, which ran on a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10.
The DEC PDP-10
The first model of the PDP-10 (KA10) had a large configuration: disk drives and printer, DECtapes and large storage cabinets with 9-track tapes. Just above the control panel and below the DECtape drive is the paper tape reader/punch.
Let’s be clear: Creeper wasn’t a real worm, but was actually an experimental self-replicating program, not intended to cause harm, but to demonstrate that a program could replicate itself autonomously.
Creeper was written in PDP-10 assembly language and ran on the old Tenex operating system (Tenex is the operating system that featured the first email programs, SNDMSG and READMAIL, as well as (e.g., the use of the “@” symbol in email addresses) and used the ARPANET (the predecessor of today’s Internet) to infect other DEC PDP-10 computers running TENEX.
Once the Creeper had “infected” another computer, it would write the following message “I’M THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN,” meaning “I’m the Creeper, catch me if you can.”
A continuous form with Creeper printing
The Creeper, immediately after displaying the text message, would begin printing a file (as shown above), but then would stop until it found another Tenex system, to which it would open a new connection, transfer to the other machine, and then start all over again. So, quite different from current ransomware, isn’t it?
The program rarely replicated itself; rather, it “moved” from system to system, attempting to remove itself from previous systems as it propagated forward. Therefore, Creeper did not install multiple instances of itself on different targets and likely returned to the same machines more than once.
The techniques developed in Creeper were later used in the McROSS “Multi-computer Route Oriented Simulation System,” an air traffic simulator, to allow parts of the simulation to move across the network.
It’s unclear how much damage (if any) Creeper actually caused. Most sources say the worm was little more than a nuisance. Some sources claim Creeper replicated so many times that it displaced other programs, but the extent of the damage is unspecified. However, the key problem—controlling these malicious programs—was quickly revealed.
The Creeper program led to further work, including a version by Thomas’s colleague, Ray Tomlinson (the inventor of email), which not only moved across the network but also replicated itself.
But to complement this “enhanced” Creeper, the Reaper program was created, which moved across the network, replicating itself, trying to find active copies of Creeper and then disconnecting them.
So, if Creeper was the first worm, then Reaper was the first software. antivirus.
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