|
History of anti-virus software
The first anti-virus software was created by Peter Tippett in 1981. [Citation needed] Tippett was an emergency room doctor who also ran a computer software company. He read an article about the first computer virus released onto the market (the Brain, Lehigh and Jerusalem2 were the first viruses to be developed, but it was Lehigh that Tippett read about) and he questioned whether they would have similar characteristics to viruses that attack humans. From an epidemiological viewpoint, he was able to determine how these viruses were affecting systems within the computer (the boot-sector was affected by the Brain virus, the .com files were affected by the Lehigh virus, and both .com and .exe files were affected by the Jerusalem virus). Tippett's company Certus International Corp. then began to create anti-virus software programs. The company was sold in 1992 to Symantec Corp, and Tippett went to work for them, incorporating the software he had developed into Symantec's product, Norton Antivirus.
|