Big AP-wide story by Nick Jesdanun on my 1982 elk cloner virus in your papers for the holiday weekend. Fun. Nick also blogged a bit about writing the story.
update ... a reporter in Pittsburgh spotted the story on the wire and called me up to add some local color.
Time to boot up the emulator...
The Apple II was such a great computer to learn on. You turn it on, can jump right into a ROM monitor and start typing in assembly. Those were the days. :)rc$ ../a2/a2 cloner.dsk THE SMILING ELK: MODIFIED DOS 16/01/82 RICHARD SKRENTA SLAVE DISKETTE DISK VOLUME 254 A 002 HELLO T 013 CLONER T 020 CLONER 2.0 B 006 CLONER.OBJ B 002 CLONER.OBK ]BLOAD CLONER.OBJ ]CALL -151 *9000L 9000- 02 ??? 9001- A9 FF LDA #$FF 9003- 85 4C STA $4C 9005- A9 8F LDA #$8F 9007- 85 4D STA $4D 9009- A9 20 LDA #$20 900B- 8D 80 A1 STA $A180 900E- A9 5B LDA #$5B 9010- 8D 81 A1 STA $A181 9013- A9 A7 LDA #$A7 9015- 8D 82 A1 STA $A182 9018- A9 AD LDA #$AD 901A- 8D D1 A4 STA $A4D1 901D- A9 B6 LDA #$B6 901F- 8D D2 A4 STA $A4D2 9022- A9 AA LDA #$AA 9024- 8D D3 A4 STA $A4D3 9027- A9 4C LDA #$4C 9029- 8D 13 A4 STA $A413 902C- A9 90 LDA #$90 *9244G ELK CLONER: THE PROGRAM WITH A PERSONALITY IT WILL GET ON ALL YOUR DISKS IT WILL INFILTRATE YOUR CHIPS YES IT'S CLONER! IT WILL STICK TO YOU LIKE GLUE IT WILL MODIFY RAM TOO SEND IN THE CLONER! *9001G WRITE PROTECTED ]
Oh btw that "CLONER 2.0" was the evil version that I never released.
Comments (7)
Hey Rich - great story. Don't know if you remember me (we met briefly at Northwestern years ago...) Never knew you were so famous! :-) Why did they decide to run this story now? Just curious.
Posted by Serge Kotlar | September 1, 2007 10:15 PM
Posted on September 1, 2007 22:15
What was the code for the first Cloner 1.
How did you learn to do this at 15?
Posted by SearchEngines WEB | September 2, 2007 3:22 AM
Posted on September 2, 2007 03:22
The story has been coming up every year or two recently, and has gotten bigger and bigger over time. CNET did a big story on Cloner in 2003. I don't know why the story seems to be gaining steam as we get further and further away from the event, though. Hmmm.
The cloner source is linked from http://www.skrenta.com/cloner/
Posted by Rich Skrenta | September 2, 2007 12:43 PM
Posted on September 2, 2007 12:43
I didnt even know you had a Blog!
You could say, because of you, I have my online business!
Take care,
Posted by Doug Woodall | September 2, 2007 6:13 PM
Posted on September 2, 2007 18:13
This brings back memories. I had this on probably all of my old Apple II disks. I can't remember it doing any damage, but it was so disenheartening to type that 'call -151' and see the evidence of infection. "Oh no, not another disk...."
I have a vague memory of an antidote utility as well.
2.0? What was that one capable of?
Posted by Mark Skrenta | September 5, 2007 9:02 AM
Posted on September 5, 2007 09:02
Tell me more about Cloner 2.0 :D
My first virus memory was when I discovered FORM.B. I noticed that every disk operation took a little longer than it should have. After a while I got a hold of a program that was capable of reading and editing raw disk sectors. I saw the virus code, with a little message, and the boot sector, moved one sector up. The message said something like "If you can read this, you're a real hacker". Damn, I felt good tha day.
(Hey, I should blog about this)
Posted by nitro2k01 | October 16, 2007 3:28 AM
Posted on October 16, 2007 03:28
Hey Rich,
I actually remember you from that computer lab back in the day , I particularly remember you playing with some code early you called the "Cookie monster" (or something like that).
basically screen would go blank and show a "Computer want a cookie" prompt.
User had to type "oreo" and work resumed.
Good times.
Steve
Posted by Steve Iams | March 26, 2008 2:43 PM
Posted on March 26, 2008 14:43