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Viruses Viruses are small packages of code. The first virus I remember was on the mainframe at the University of Michigan. It was a pair of eyes that appeared in the center of the computer screen. The eyes looked left. They looked right. They looked at you, winked, and went away. Back in the 1970s, it was considered harmless fun to wake up the programmers who spent all night at the computer lab. Viruses have become a lot more destructive lately. The first function of viruses is to replicate themselves. Their second goal is to infect other computers. In the early days of personal computers, back before 1995, viruses traveled by “sneaker ware.” I brought it to you when I put an infected floppy in your machine.