abarbarian Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 http://www.computeractive.co.uk/ca/news/2232012/happy-birthday-brain-the-worlds-first-pc-virus Brain is considered to be the first IBM PC virus, paving the way for the proliferation of PC viruses over the past two decades. Its birthday is unlikely to be celebrated by many. All together now, Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday dear Brain Happy birthday to you Here is a thought. How many folks do you think Brain and his successors have created jobs for ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 From Wikipedia Brain (computer virus) article: Brain is the industry standard name for a computer virus that was released in its first form in January 1986,[1] and is considered to be the first computer virusfor MS-DOS. It infects the boot sector of storage media formatted with the DOSFile Allocation Table (FAT) file system. Brain was written by two brothers, Basit Farooq Alvi and Amjad Farooq Alvi.[2] Description: Brain affects the IBM PC computer by replacing the boot sector of a floppy disk with a copy of the virus. The real boot sector is moved to another sector and marked as bad. Infected disks usually have five kilobytes of bad sectors. The disk label is changed to ©Brain, and the following text can be seen in infected boot sectors: Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Brain & Amjads (pvt) Ltd VIRUS_SHOE RECORD V9.0 Dedicated to the dynamic memories of millions of viruses who are no longer with us today - Thanks GOODNESS!! BEWARE OF THE er..VIRUS : this program is catching program follows after these messages....$#@%$@!! There are many minor and major variations to that version of the text. The virus slows down the floppy disk drive and makes seven kilobytes of memory unavailable to DOS. Brain was written by Amjad Farooq Alvi,[3] who at the time lived in Chahmiran, near Lahore Railway Station, in Lahore, Pakistan. The brothers told TIME magazine they had written it to protect their medical software from piracy, and it was supposed to target copyright infringers only.[4] The cryptic message "Welcome to the Dungeon", a safeguard and reference to an early programming forum on Dungeon BBS, appeared after a year because the brothers licensed a beta version of the code. The brothers could not be contacted to receive the final release of this version of the program. (see Author Response). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
therock247uk Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 interesting! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goretsky Posted February 2, 2013 Share Posted February 2, 2013 Hello, In September 1989, the Pakistani Brain virus was first computer virus I ever dealt with on my first day of work at McAfee Associates, which was then run out of John McAfee's house. John had just explained to me how file infectors worked, and how VIRUSCAN worked, and how files could be cleaned by drawing little diagrams on scrap paper, using flow-chart-like shapes to show how a program file is laid out as a series of instructions and then arrows showing how viruses attach to them. As we're sitting there at the kitchen table, the phone rings, and I pick it up since I'm the closest. The guy explains he's detected a virus, I look at John and he tells me to take the call. The Pakistani Brain virus is, by the way, a floppy diskette boot sector infector. Or, in other words, it does not infect files. I have no idea what a boot sector is. I spend about five minutes on the phone with the guy trying to find out what file is infected. He's getting more and more frustrated, telling me no files are infected, and I'm getting more and more anxious. Finally, I look at John and shrug. He looks and me and motions to hand over the phone. I tell the caller to wait while I transfer him and hand the phone over. John tells the guy to copy the files off of the diskette, yes, yes, their not infected, and to reformat the diskette and hangs up in about 45 seconds. John looks at me. I look at John. I'm turning red and about to go into thinking, "This is it, I blew it. Ifailed my first phone call after he spent 30 minutes explaining to me and diagramming how viruses work and now he's going to fire me and I'm going to go homewithoutajobandwhatwillbecomeofmeand..." John grabs another piece of scrap paper, draws a series of concentric circles, and starts explaining to me how boot sectors work. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted February 2, 2013 Share Posted February 2, 2013 Thanks for that personal story Aryeh. Fascinating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted February 2, 2013 Share Posted February 2, 2013 That is a great story Aryeh! Thanks so much for sharing it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted February 2, 2013 Author Share Posted February 2, 2013 Interesting tale Aryeh. Funny how things always go bottom up when the boss is around. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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