It’s now January 2011. Which means the Brain virus is now 25 years old

Brain, spreading on 5.25″ floppy disks was the first PC virus.

Which means that the PC virus is now 25 years old.

So, what did brain do? Let’s look at our virus description database, which – of course – has a description of the virus.

As you can see, the Brain virus contains contact information for “Basit and Amjad” in Lahore, Pakistan.

Due to this 25 year milestone, I’ve decided to go to Lahore, Pakistan. I’ll go there to find Basit and Amjad, and I’ll speak with them about how they feel about the phenomenon they started.

Of course, writing a boot sector virus in 1986 was a completely different thing than writing, say, a banking trojan in 2011. For one, writing viruses was not illegal in 1986. People did not know at the time if writing viruses was a bad idea. We learned that later.

But it just boggles to mind to think about how much has happened in these 25 years.

So, what would you like to ask from the writers of the very first PC virus?

Post your suggestions to our blog comments. I’ll take the best ones with me to Lahore.

Yours,
Mikko

On 24/01/11 At 01:52 PM

Full story: F-Secure Antivirus Research Weblog

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