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Rich Skrenta, who wrote the world's first computer virus as a joke to his friends, is 40 years old today.

A student named Rich Skrenta created the world's first computer virus with a computer number he found to fool his friends who were suspicious of him for his computer pranks. > gained notoriety as the initiator.

Near Pittsburgh, Mt. Skrenta, studying at Lebanon (Mount Lebanon) Lyceum, for the first time on his Apple II computer during the winter vacation, now called the "boot sector" virus wrote the known virus.

From the first months of 1982, he started spreading the virus in the high school he attended and in a local computer club.

The virus later became the first virus to spread worldwide. In the intervening 25 years, Skrenta, now 40, launched the online news company Topix, helped build a Time Warner-owned web directory, and wrote countless computer programs; but he could not get rid of the tag of being the person who wrote and released the first computer virus 'Elk Cloner'.

Skrenta, for the first virus, “It was a stupid joke. If I had to choose between not being recognized at all and being recognized for doing this, I'd rather be recognized this way. But when you look at everything I've done, you know something strangemethod.” he said.

According to research, there were some computer viruses before "Elk Cloner"; but these were either written for control or were very rare.

The reason why Skrenta is considered to be the first computer virus writer is that the virus he wrote spread very quickly among the most common home computers of his time.

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