The first known that appeared 'in the wild' was ' Elk Cloner', in 1981, which infected Apple II computers. The Creeper virus was followed by several other viruses. Some people consider 'The Reaper' the first antivirus software ever written – it may be the case, but it is important to note that the Reaper was actually a virus itself specifically designed to remove the Creeper virus.

The Creeper virus was eventually deleted by a program created by Ray Tomlinson and known as ' The Reaper'. This computer virus infected Digital Equipment Corporation's ( DEC) PDP-10 mainframe computers running the TENEX operating system. See also: Timeline of notable computer viruses and worms 1949–1980 period (pre-antivirus days) Īlthough the roots of the computer virus date back as early as 1949, when the Hungarian scientist John von Neumann published the 'Theory of self-reproducing automata', the first known computer virus appeared in 1971 and was dubbed the ' Creeper virus'. Some products also include protection from other computer threats, such as infected and malicious URLs, spam, scam and phishing attacks, online identity (privacy), online banking attacks, social engineering techniques, advanced persistent threat (APT), and botnet DDoS attacks. In particular, modern antivirus software can protect users from malicious browser helper objects (BHOs), browser hijackers, ransomware, keyloggers, backdoors, rootkits, trojan horses, worms, malicious LSPs, dialers, fraud tools, adware, and spyware. However, with the proliferation of other malware, antivirus software started to protect from other computer threats.

Security information and event management (SIEM)ĬlamTk, an open source antivirus based on the ClamAV antivirus engine, originally developed by Tomasz Kojm in 2001Īntivirus software, or antivirus software (abbreviated to AV software), also known as anti-malware, is a computer program used to prevent, detect, and remove malware.Īntivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name.

Host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS).

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