30th anniversary of the first computer virus epidemic for IBM PC

30 years ago, two brothers from Lahore, Pakistan, created the “© Brain” program. The brothers were called Amjat and Basit Alvi (Amdjat and Basit Faroog Alvi), and they created the program to fight the pirates who stole the software from their company. The brothers at that time were creating medical software that was used in cardiac devices (the brothers' father was a doctor). The software included the brothers' data, including names, address, and telephone. Turning to the brothers, a “pirate” could receive a cure for their protective program. Ironically, software designed to deal with cybercriminals has itself become evil (if you can talk about the program that way).

Brain hit the IBM PC, and became the first virus to go beyond the walls of the developer’s cabinet, but also to other countries, breaking the borders of the country in which it was created. Software was distributed on floppy disks.

If you would try to become a pirate by running a (illegally) copy of the brothers program, you would receive the following message:
"Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Basie & Amends (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 .... $ # @% $ @! ”



The virus was hit by the boot sector of 5-inch floppy disks with a capacity of 350 KB. After infection, some time passed, and the virus filled all the disk space, slowing down the drive. Over time, the diskette became impossible to use. According to the brothers, the program did not delete the data.

Interestingly, this virus hid itself, trying to mask the infected space on a floppy disk. And if they tried to count the infected sector, then the software substituted the uninfected area. The virus not only identified each of its copies, but also counted the number of copies.

The problem of the program turned out to be that it was distributed on ordinary diskettes, without a copy of the brothers' medical software. In 1988, the program destroyed the correspondent's notes of one of the well-known publications that he kept for several months.


Our hero-virus writers. Now the

virus became very famous already in 1987, when the brothers began to receive a huge number of calls from embittered users whose data was destroyed. After the virus began to infect not hundreds but thousands of PCs, the brothers changed their phones and place of work.

Now they are the owners of the largest Internet service provider in Pakistan. The headquarters of Brain Net is located at the address specified in the first version of the virus.