The Cruncher virus also turned out to be absolutely benign. In other words, it mirrored the entire display on the monitor. One of the odd things about this virus was that it was only active on Saturdays: once a week it reversed non-compressed bitmap graphic objects. The “prank virus” title is deservedly held by HPS, a program which was created specifically for the Windows 98 operating system but in fact spread months before this environment was released. It simply displayed the message on the screen: “Your computer is now stoned. The original version of this virus landed on a computer system via the floppy disk drive, and, just like Creeper, did not cause any harm to the computer. It was first detected in 1988 in New Zealand. Stoned was another “fun” virus whose main purpose was to promote a message to the user. It did not cause any harm to the computer system. This primitive worm looked for other computers on the network – which back then was a small, localized affair, copied itself to them and displayed the following message: “I'M THE CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.” If Creeper found an existing copy of itself on a computer, it simply “jumped over” to another computer. It was called the Creeper, and it appeared in 1971, written by an employee at the US Ministry of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The first known computer virus in history was a harmless specimen. To mark April Fools’ Day, Kaspersky Lab looks back at the “benign malware” which has occasionally spread over the World Wide Web.
In a few extraordinary cases, viruses were even seen getting rid of dangerous malware or optimizing the computer’s resources. In the history of malware writing and malware hunting, there are a number of unusual stories involving programs which looked like typical malware … but did nothing more damaging than putting a smile on users’ faces.
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