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."

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!

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.

Re:get rid of adds

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Are you a creationist too?

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.