What is the Elk cloner virus?

Elk Cloner was the first computer virus known to have been widely spread. Richie Skrenta, a 15-year-old high school student, wrote the virus for the Apple II operating system, which was stored on a floppy disk. When the computer starts a floppy disk infected with Elk Cloner, the virus begins to function and then copies itself to any uninfected floppy disk that is accessed. Because the computer at that time has two floppy disk drives, and because the disk often passes between friends, the virus is replicated frequently. After being infected, the computer will display the following text every 50 times it is started:

Elk cloner:the program with a personality it'll get on all your disks it'll infiltrate your chips Yes it ' s cloner! It'll stick to you-like glue It'll modify Ram too Send in the cloner!

Elk Cloner is not intentionally causing damage, but is designed to be used as a joke. According to Worldhistory, teenage Skrenta love to modify programs so that they stop working after some code has been specified, and display some skrenta jokes at that point in time. Not surprisingly, the young program's friends became alert and no longer allowed him to be near their disks. Elk Cloner copies its own capabilities (judging the main criteria of the virus) so that Skrenta can continue to tease his friends without physical proximity. It is reported that the virus spread widely among his classmates (also including his maths teacher), thus making Elk cloner in history.