Worlds 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. The brothers had created a heart-monitoring program, and it had come to their attention that pirates were distributing the software without the brothers’ permission. Brain was developed as a way to try to regulate and protect the software they created.

If illegally copied versions of the software were installed on a computer, the virus would also copy itself onto the machine. The user of the pirated software received an embedded message stating that his or her computer was infected with a virus and that the user would need to contact the brothers immediately for “inoculation.”

Once the outbreak reached its peak, the brothers became inundated with phone calls from all over the world, demanding that machines be “disinfected”. There was never any legal action taken against the brothers; however, the media went crazy. Today, the brothers own BrainNet, which is Pakistan’s largest ISP. Consequentially, Brain motivated the technicians at IBM to create the first antivirus software for the general consumer in 1987.

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