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

Let me get this right.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of some of the first PC viruses, Slashdot linked to a site where you can get some of the most up to date malware, adware and other infections!?

How festive!

Amiga had it first.

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

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.

Re:get rid of adds

[JWSmythe]

My boxii take serious offense to that, you insensitive clod. :)

Re:mcAffee is that old?

[sakdoctor]

In 1986, windows was suffering from a virus infestation, a man dressed in business/casual with glasses and a stethoscope appeared, claiming to be a virus scanner. He promised the users a solution for their problem with the malware.
The users in turn promised to pay him $29.99 a month for the removal. The man accepted, and played a musical pipe to lure the viruses onto a 5.25" floppy, where all of them quarantined.

Despite his success, the users reneged on their promise, and did a charge-back on their credit cards. The man left the town angrily, but vowed to return some time later, seeking revenge.

On talk like a pirate day, while the users were in McDonalds, he played his pipe yet again, dressed in lycra, this time attracting the data and core DLLs. One hundred and thirty files followed him out of c:/windows, where they were lured into a recycle bin and never seen again.

listen

[Spy Handler]

if the webpage has such an "intrusive interstitial ad" that you felt you had to protect the public with your warning, perhaps it would've been better to NOT LINK TO THE SHITTY FUCKING WEBSITE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Not really a virus, or at least not effective.

[atomic-penguin]

It loosely meets the definition of a virus. It wasn't the first computer virus. It isn't very noteworthy, other than it was the first known computer virus which the author(s) took full credit, and provided their real names and accurate contact information. We have other words for this type of software now. You might even call it copy-protection, or DRM, today.

Computer viruses started off as an academic exercise. In other words, the goal was to create a self-reproducing program with survival instinct, similar to that of a real-world virus. According to Mark Ludwig's Little Black Book of Computer Viruses, the functional elements of a Computer Virus follow in the list below. I highly recommend the book, for anyone interested

1. MUST contain a search routine. Important for both self-replication, and survival. Where and how will the virus replicate?
2. MUST contain a copy routine. This is the self-replication part, and its obviously important for the survival to the virus.
3. SHOULD contain anti-detection routine(s), or somehow evade detection. Obviously important to the survival of the virus.

Number 3 is really what separates a true "virus" from programs which are mislabeled as such. If the virus displays a message "I'm in your computer eating your data, nom nom nom!", it limits its own effectiveness. The virus will get eradicated, it will not survive in the wild. Which comes back to my point about this story. While this program loosely meets the definition of a virus, it was not written to be a self-reproducing entity with simulated survival instinct. It was primarily intended to prevent unauthorized copying. Its impact was limited to floppy disks with unauthorized copies of the program it was intended to protect from copying.