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."

Re:Amiga had it first.

[idontgno]

"Your Amiga has come alive"
Unfortunately the DOS was flaky enough as it was. The DOS unintentionally ruined disks.

FTFY.

How many times did I read, through panic-stricken teary eyes, "Your disk structure is corrupt. Use DISKDOCTOR to fix it."?

The Amiga was my first PC love, but by God did I hate how crufty and fragile AmigaDOS was. It was like being in love with a beautiful, adoring, and creative woman with an unfortunate habit of accidentally setting fires and leaving them to burn.

Sigh. At least I was lucky enough to never have to deal with an Amiga virus.

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) [textfiles.com] 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 [vxheavens.com], 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.