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PC Virus Turns 25

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the before-my-time dept.

Batblue writes "Happy anniversary Basit and Amjad! Twenty-five years ago this month (CT: Warning, intrusive interstitial ad), the Alvi brothers of Lahore, Pakistan, gave the world the Brain Virus, the first bit of malware capable of infecting a DOS-based PC. Back in those relatively innocent times, the brothers actually embedded their real names and business address in the code and later told Time magazine they had written the virus to protect their medical software from piracy. Who knows what they were really thinking, but by all accounts the Brain Virus was relatively harmless. Twenty-five years later, most malware is anything but benign and cyber criminals pull off exploits the Alvi brothers never envisioned."

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Amiga had it first. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 4, Informative

    I remember my screen said,

    "Something wonderful is happening"
    .
    .
    .
    "Your Amiga has come alive"

    Unfortunately the DOS was flaky enough as it was. The virus unintentionally ruined disks.
    No one believed me at first- the message didn't come up again for a couple more weeks so they thought i was crazy.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    1. Re:Amiga had it first. by Xian97 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Even before that the Atari ST had a floppy boot sector virus that would invert your mouse - left and right worked fine, but up and down were reversed.

      I remember seeing that message on the Amiga too. I had just bought one and some of the discs a friend had loaned me had that virus on it. It wrote itself to the floppy boot sector so it couldn't be removed from many discs without making them unbootable. It only spread if you warm booted, so you could still use the floppy if you turned the power off after running one with that virus on it.

  2. 1988 Mac Viruses by catchblue22 · · Score: 1, Informative

    The first time I remember seeing anti-virus software was on a 1988 Mac Plus (system 6). The software was called "Vaccine"...I remember the icon of it loading at boot up time looked like an hypodermic needle. Of course that was before Apple adopted BSD as the basis for OS X. Security has improved significantly since then.

    --
    This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
  3. Re:get rid of adds by MadKeithV · · Score: 3, Informative

    1) The term is 'viruses' not 'virii'.

    You have about as much chance of getting people to stop using that as you do of getting them to stop saying 'boxen'.

    A case can be made for either. Not everybody agrees with you. Get over it.

    Meh.
    I could care less.