Chris Pile (programmer)

Christopher Pile (born 1968 or 1969, also known as "the Black Baron") is a programmer who was sentenced to 18 months in jail in 1995 for creating and spreading two computer viruses called Pathogen and Queeg.

[1] While Pile was not the first person convicted for creating and spreading computer viruses, his case was the first "widely covered and published computer crime case that ended in a jail sentence"[2] as well as the first such case to be prosecuted in England and Wales.

[3] In addition to the two viruses, he also created Smeg (short for "Simulated Metamorphic Encryption enGine"[4]), a software tool that he used to hide Pathogen and Queeg from the antivirus software of the time.

Smeg was written in a way that allowed it to be also used by others to hide and spread their own viruses.

[2]