Fred Cohen

Fred Cohen was born in 1956. He is an American computer scientist who did important work to help keep computers safe.

He was the first person to explain what a computer virus is and made tools to protect against them. His ideas are used all over the world.

In 1983, when he was a student at the University of Southern California's School of Engineering, Cohen made a special program for a class taught by Leonard Adleman. This program could copy itself and move from one computer to another, hiding inside a regular program on a floppy disk. This was one of the earliest examples of a computer virus. He made it just to learn how these things work.

Cohen also showed in 1987 that it is impossible to create a perfect way to stop every virus. He thought some viruses could be useful. For example, he made a compression virus that could make files smaller without causing harm. Over many years, Fred Cohen has written more than 60 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 "Trends In Computer Virus Research" from 1991 and "Computer Viruses - Theory and Experiments" from 1984. These papers helped people learn how to protect computers better.