First PC virus created in Pakistan

[sonicboom]

First PC virus created in Pakistan

Jan 21, 2011, 02.37pm IST


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.

The 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".


Read more: First PC virus created in Pakistan - The Times of India First ever PC virus was created in Pakistan - The Economic Times