Frederick B. Cohen (born 1956) is an American
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...
and best known as the inventor of
computer virus
A computer virus is a type of computer program that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a comput ...
defense techniques. He gave the definition of "computer virus". Cohen is best known for his pioneering work on computer viruses, the invention of
high integrity operating system mechanisms now in widespread use, and automation of protection management functions.
In 1983, while a student at the
University of Southern California
, mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it"
, religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist
, established =
, accreditation = WSCUC
, type = Private research university
, academic_affiliations =
, endowment = $8.1 ...
's School of Engineering (currently the
Viterbi School of Engineering
The USC Viterbi School of Engineering (formerly the USC School of Engineering) is the engineering school of the University of Southern California. It was renamed following a $52 million donation by Andrew J. Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm ...
), he wrote a program for a parasitic application that seized control of computer operations, one of the first computer viruses, in
Leonard Adleman
Leonard Adleman (born December 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist. He is one of the creators of the RSA encryption algorithm, for which he received the 2002 Turing Award, often called the Nobel prize of Computer science. He is also kno ...
’s class. He wrote a short program, as an experiment, that could "infect" computers, make copies of itself, and spread from one machine to another. It was hidden inside a larger, legitimate program, which was loaded into a computer on a
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...
.
One of the few solid theoretical results in the study of computer viruses is Cohen's 1987 demonstration that there is no algorithm that can perfectly detect all possible viruses.
Cohen also believed there are ''positive viruses'' and he had created one called the
compression virus which spreading would infect all
executable
In computing, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions", as opposed to a data fil ...
files on a computer, not to destroy, but to make them smaller.
During the past 10 years of his research work, Fred Cohen wrote over 60 professional publications and 11 books.
Papers
1991, Trends In Computer Virus Research
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20140203201727/http://vxheaven.org/lib/afc07.html 1989, Models of Practical Defenses Against Computer Virusesbr>1988, On the Implications of Computer Viruses and Methods of Defense
References
Cohen, F., 1987. "Computer Viruses Theory and Experiments," Computers and Security, vol. 6, pp. 22--35
American computer scientists
USC Viterbi School of Engineering alumni
Living people
1956 births
Computer security academics
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