… Our journey through the history of the most famous and deadly virusesof all time continues! Today we will look back to 1986 and the Pakistani Brain, a relatively harmless piece of malware, which is considered the first virus ever created for computers. This particular virus infected the boot sector of storage media, configuring the File Allocation Table (FAT).
The most interesting part of the story is that the “Brain” or “Pakistani Brain” was created in Pakistan by brothers Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, as an effort to combat software piracy.
Known simply as “Brain,” the two brothers' bug corrupted the computer's memory, slowed down the hard drive, and left a short message in the boot sector.
At the time, programmers Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who were just 17 and 24 years old respectively, were running a computer shop in Lahore, Pakistan. When they discovered that their customers were illegally distributing copies of the software they had developed, the brothers decided to take some extra precautions… for protection!
Thus, "Engefalos" was born, as an attempt by the two young men to scare away pirates, although this particular virus was never intended to be malicious.
In a 2011 interview with F-Secure, the Finnish anti-virus company, the Alvi brothers referred to “Brain” as a “friendly virus,” which was never created with the intention of destroying user data
Pakistani Brain had no malicious intent, he simply renamed the table of contents of the corresponding floppy disks to Brain. This practically made it impossible to run the illegal copy of the original software.
Why else would the creators have stamped their virus code with their names, phone number, and store address?
The following text was written into the program:
while there were other variations:
But let's see what the researchers themselves say:….
“The idea was that if the program was illegally copied, then and only then would the virus work,” Amjad said in a television interview a few years ago. Alvis also mentioned a clever method for tracking the spread of the virus.
“We had built a counter into the program that could track not only the copies that were being made and when they were made, but also what the original software was that they were based on,” said one of the Alvi brothers, who now live in Pakistan and work as Internet service providers in their privately owned business, “Brain Limited.”.
…And somewhere here our journey ends today, but we renew our appointment for next Thursday with even more twists that we hope will pleasantly surprise you! 😉
