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   COMPUTER VIRUS




Like any other field in computer science, viruses have evolved -a great deal indeed- over the years. In the series of press releases which start today, we will look at the origins and evolution of malicious code since it first appeared up to the present.

Going back to the origin of viruses, it was in 1949 that Mathematician John Von Neumann described self-replicating programs which could resemble computer viruses as they are known today. However, it was not until the 60s that we find the predecessor of current viruses. In that decade, a group of programmers developed a game called Core Wars, which could reproduce every time it was run, and even saturate the memory of other players' computers. The creators of this peculiar game also created the first antivirus, an application named Reeper, which could destroy copies created by Core Wars.

However, it was only in 1983 that one of these programmers announced the existence of Core Wars, which was described the following year in a prestigious scientific magazine: this was actually the starting point of what we call computer viruses today.

At that time, a still young MS-DOS was starting to become the preeminent operating system worldwide. This was a system with great prospects, but still many deficiencies as well, which arose from software developments and the lack of many hardware elements known today. Even like this, this new operating system became the target of a virus in 1966: Brain, a malicious code created in Pakistan which infected boot sectors of disks so that their contents could not be accessed. That year also saw the birth of the first Trojan: an application called PC-Write.

Shortly after, virus writers realized that infecting files could be even more harmful to systems. In 1987, a virus called Suriv-02 appeared, which infected COM files and opened the door to the infamous viruses Jerusalem or Viernes 13. However, the worst was still to come: 1988 set the date when the"Morris worm" appeared, infecting 6,000 computers.

From that date up to 1995 the types of malicious codes that are known today started being developed: the first macro viruses appeared, polymorphic viruses... Some of these even triggered epidemics, such as MichaelAngelo. However, there was an event that changed the virus scenario worldwide: the massive use of the Internet and e-mail. Little by little, viruses started adapting to this new situation until the appearance, in 1999, of Melissa, the first malicious code to cause a worldwide epidemic, opening a new era for computer viruses.

he ''virus'' program that has plagued many of the nation's computer networks since Wednesday night was created by a computer science student who is the son of one of the Government's most respected computer security experts.

The program writer, Robert T. Morris Jr., a 23-year-old graduate student at Cornell University whom friends describe as ''brilliant,'' devised the set of computer instructions as an experiment, three sources with detailed knowledge of the case have told The New York Times.

The program was intended to live innocently and undetected in the Arpanet, the Department of Defense computer network in which it was first introduced, and secretly and slowly make copies that would move from computer to computer. But a design error caused it instead to replicate madly out of control, ultimately jamming more than 6,000 computers nationwide in this country's most serious computer ''virus'' attack.

The dent's program jammed the computers of corporate research centers including the Rand Corporation and SRI International, universities like the University of California at Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as military research centers and bases all over the United States. Meeting with the Authorities

The virus's creator could not be reached for comment yesterday. The sources said the student flew to Washington yesterday and is planning to hire a lawyer and meet with officials of the Defense Communications Agency, in charge of the Arpanet network.

Friends of the student said he did not intend to cause damage. They said he created the virus as an intellectual challenge to explore the security of computer systems.

His father, Robert T. Morris Sr., has written widely on the security of the Unix operating system, the computer master program that was the target of the son's virus program. He is now chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center in Bethesda, Md., the arm of the National Security Agency devoted to protecting computers against outside attack. He is most widely known for writing a program to decipher symbols, or ''passwords,'' that give users access to computers and their data. 'Very Well Trained'

The elder Mr. Morris, in a telephone interview yesterday, called the virus ''the work of a bored graduate student.''

Speaking in the presence of officials and lawyers of the National Security Agency, he would not discuss the case in detail. He said his son was ''for his age very well trained in computer science: he studied it in college and held various summer jobs at various places.''

The sources said the 56-year-old Mr. Morris had no prior knowledge of the virus attack.

Mr. Morris said he believed that the virus might ultimately have a positive effect. ''It has raised the public awareness to a considerable degree,'' he said. ''It is likely to make people more careful and more attentive to vulnerabilities in the future.''

Managers at hundreds of research and military facilities around the country yesterday continued efforts to cleanse their systems, while computer scientists studied the virulent program in an effort to prevent a recurrence. Several computer sites were spared from the virus because system managers had rewritten security programs in light of at least three separate security flaws in computers running the Unix operating system. Most of the loopholes have only recently been discovered.

One site that escaped infection was the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's Bell Laboratories. Computer scientists there said the program with the principal flaw was rewritten about a year ago. Exploitation of Flaws

The student's virus, actually a group of small programs, entered systems by exploiting the flaws, said Clifford Stoll, a computer security expert at Harvard University. Once it entered a given computer it was designed to hide itself in the computer's memory then systematically search for ways to enter other computers linked through communications networks.

Computer viruses are the computer equivalent of biological viruses, replicating largely on their own and spreading from computer to computer, consuming computer processing power and storage space or potentially destroying stored information.

The virus was detected in part because a design error led it to create many copies rather than a single copy on each machine it attacked. Computer researchers said the copies were like echoes bouncing back and forth off the walls of canyons.

Computer experts who were assessing the harm yesterday said there seemed to be no damage other than the thousands of hours that computer scientists and programmers were spending removing the program from their systems. 'Classic Hack That Went Wrong'

The program eventually affected as many as 6,000 computers, or 10 percent of the systems linked through an international group of computer communications networks, the Internet.

''This sounds like a classic hack that went wrong,'' said Mark Seiden, a computer scientist who is an expert on the Unix operating system.

PURPOSE I am wondering why someone would bother to make a computer virus. It is possible I am wondering this because I have no idea what viruses really do, so let me explain. I have always been under the impression that a computer virus is a program that someone designed to attack and harm a computer, but without any other real purpose. If that is what they are for, what is the point? Why would someone sit around and design something that damages something without getting any money or anything out of it? Or maybe viruses aren't really designed to be bad? Just bad programming?