What is the name of first ever created virus?
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It was 25 years ago that this balding man, Amjad Farooq Alvi, then 24, and his brother Basat, 17, both based, of all places, in the unlikely tech hub of Lahore, created the first virus to hit the personal computer.NEW DELHI: Floating around in the vast universe that is YouTube is an interview with an unsung pioneer of the digital age. The chat, on a programme called ‘Morning with Farah’, was first aired on Pakistani channel ATV (it’s not clear when, though the video was uploaded in June 2008). A thin, balding man sits dressed unremarkably in a dark suit and tie. “You fixed America!” Farah tells him. “They always claimed to be the biggest protectors of copyright. You showed them up to be the biggest violators.” The man smiles. “Definitely.” It was 25 years ago that this balding man, Amjad Farooq Alvi, then 24, and his brother Basat, 17, both based, of all places, in the unlikely tech hub of Lahore, created the first virus to hit the personal computer. Called © Brain, it spread like wildfire, igniting an inglorious era of crashing computers, lost data, millions of frustrated and bewildered computer users, and, of course, the $16.5-billion computer security industry. Throughout ‘Morning with Farah’, there is a distinct undertone of nationalism. A caller into the show, (Mubashir from Karachi) asks: “I am not sure whether or not this is a matter of pride that it was in Pakistan that the first computer virus was written. What do you think?” he asks Alvi. Oh, absolutely. Rest assured that it is a matter of pride,” replies Alvi, who currently runs a telecom company in Pakistan with his brother. “The intention was not destructive. We created the virus to protect our intellectual property and keep track of who was copying our software.” © Brain was certainly not the first computer virus — such programs had been known to exist since at least the early 1980s. But it was certainly the fastest-spreading at the time, helped along by the growing popularity of the personal computer, famously named, just a few years earlier, as TIME magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’. Well, the “intention” of such geeks has undergone a sea change over the past 25 years, says Jagannath Patnaik, Director, channel sales (South Asia), Kaspersky Lab India. “In the early days, virus writers were mostly young college students or geeks who wanted to prove their technical ability ... however, over time, they started smelling money in it and virus writing today is a big, underworld business,” he says. Discover the stories of your interestThe Alvi brothers’ virus was relatively harmless — all it did was change the ‘volume label’ of the disk (essentially renaming it). But for the surprised and astonished user who was tech-savvy enough to dig deeper, the program also had a message hidden in it: “Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Basit & Amjad (Pvt) Ltd”. It then went on to give the address and phone number of the brothers and exhorted the hapless user to contact them for a solution. It all began after the brothers discovered illegal copies of a medical software they had written. They had to do something, and hit upon the idea of writing a virus as a means to keep track of all the copies made of their program, the younger brother told TIME in a 1988 interview. “The idea was that only if the program was illegally copied would the virus load. We also had a ‘counter’ in the program which could keep track of all copies made and when they were made, as well as tell us the parent copy from which it had been derived,” Amjad Alvi tells Farah in the show. But as is evident, the brothers were no saints. The TIME magazine article more than hints that the men were software pirates themselves, who often loaded © Brain onto ‘cut-rate’ copies of then-popular office software programs such as Lotus and Wordstar — which they produced and sold for a few dollars. American students and backpackers visiting Lahore in 1986 and 1987 would buy such programs, otherwise available in the US for a few hundred dollars and take them back with them. It wasn’t long before the brothers started getting calls from the US from users asking them to disinfect their machines. “Then people started finding the software all over the place,” Alvi says in the TV interview. “But the virus could not have spread unless people were copying the software illegally.” “It is often said of Asians that they don’t value intellectual property. But the spread of © Brain really showed that there are people like that over there (the West) as well,” says the older brother with a mischievous grin. Read More News onStay on top of technology and startup news that matters. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest and must-read tech news, delivered straight to your inbox. ...morelessETPrime stories of the day What was the first virus called?Two scientists contributed to the discovery of the first virus, Tobacco mosaic virus. Ivanoski reported in 1892 that extracts from infected leaves were still infectious after filtration through a Chamberland filter-candle. Bacteria are retained by such filters, a new world was discovered: filterable pathogens.
How was the first virus created?To date, no clear explanation for the origin(s) of viruses exists. Viruses may have arisen from mobile genetic elements that gained the ability to move between cells. They may be descendants of previously free-living organisms that adapted a parasitic replication strategy.
Who named first virus?Prior to 1988, most viruses were mere annoyances and virtually harmless. In January of 1986, the first virus written for Windows based PCs was born. Known simply as “Brain,” it was written by two brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who were only 17 and 24 years old at the time.
Who made the I Love You virus?ILOVEYOU was created by Onel de Guzman aka Lto3, a college student in Manila, Philippines, who was 24 years old at the time.
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