Regarded as the first virus to hit personal computers worldwide, "Elk Cloner" spread through Apple II floppy disks. The programme was authored by Rich Skrenta, a ninth-grade student then, who wanted to play a joke on his schoolmates. The virus was put on a gaming disk, which could be used 49 times. On 50th time, instead of starting the game, it opened a blank screen that read a poem: "It will get on all your disks. It will infiltrate your chips. Yes it's Cloner! It will stick to you like glue. It will modify RAM too. Send in the Cloner!" The computer would then be infected.
Elk Cloner was though a self-replicating virus like most other viruses, it bore little resemblance to the malicious programmes of today.
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