History lessons for better public policy: how to build a cyber secure society

In 1971, Bob Thomas, a computer researcher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, created a test program that he called Creeper. His aim was to prove the theory first proposed by legendary mathematician John von Neumann that a program could self-replicate.

Thomas released the Creeper worm into the US Department of Defense’s ARPANET’s network (the forerunner of the internet) and it quickly spread leaving the benign message “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” wherever it appeared. Thomas had created the world’s first computer virus.

Today, governments and companies find themselves under constant attack from far more hostile and sophisticated forms of computer viruses than even Thomas must have imagined. In 2024, an estimated 600 million cyberattacks were launched against organizations and individuals every day.