Cookie Monster was a program created in 1969 for several computer operating systems. The program was named after an obnoxious cartoon bear advertising cereal, but later became associated with the Muppet Cookie Monster. It started out as a way for computer users at Brown University to annoy their fellow students by manually sending messages blocking computer processes and demanding cookies until the user of the ransomed computer typed “cookie”. Though it is often called a virus, it does not self-replicate and spread, and so is considered a proto-virus, or simply malware instead. It is unrelated to the HTTP cookie.