PC Virus Turns 25

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."

Comments

Bad security model still unchallenged... ugh!

[ka9dgx]

The solution to this problem has been known for a very long time... it's the principle of least privilege.

We've had 25 years to wise up and stop using a "default permit" based system and still haven't done so.

Here's a summary of the situation, for those who want to help push things in the right direction.