| Christopher Pile | |
| Occupation: | Programmer |
| Known For: | Created the computer viruses 'Pathogen' and 'Queeg' |
Christopher Pile (born, 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.