Fred Cohen

Frederick B. Cohen (born 1956) is an American computer scientist known for his important work in keeping computers safe. He was the first person to define what a computer virus is and created ways to defend against them. His ideas and tools are used all around the world to protect computers.

In 1983, while he was a student at the University of Southern California's School of Engineering, Cohen wrote a special program for a class taught by Leonard Adleman. This program could copy itself and move from one computer to another, hidden inside a regular program on a floppy disk. This was one of the very first examples of a computer virus, and he created it just to see how such things work.

Cohen also showed in 1987 that it is impossible to create a perfect way to find every possible virus. He believed some viruses could be helpful too. For example, he made a compression virus that made files smaller instead of causing damage. Over many years, Fred Cohen has written more than 60 professional papers and 11 books about his research.

Papers

Fred Cohen wrote many important papers about computer safety and viruses. Some of his well-known works include titles like "Trends In Computer Virus Research" from 1991 and "Computer Viruses - Theory and Experiments" from 1984. These papers helped people understand how to protect computers better.