PC Virus Celebrates 20th Birthday

WingaWinga MrSouth Africa Icrontian
edited January 2006 in Science & Tech
January 19th is the 20th anniversary for the appearance of the first PC virus. Brain, a boot sector virus, was let loose in January 1986.

Brain was a relatively innocuous nuisance in contrast with modern Trojan, rootkits and other malware that make up today's computer virus landscape.
The biggest change over the last 20 years has been in the motives of virus writers rather than in the types of malware they've cooked up, according to anti-virus firm F-Secure.

"The most significant change has been the evolution of virus writing hobbyists into criminally operated gangs bent on financial gain," said F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hypponen. “This trend is showing no signs of stopping."
Source: The Register

Comments

  • manoj
    edited January 2006
    good article nice for history. i have had a horribl time in hte last 2 days cos of the latest one - worm_grew.a
  • Unknown
    edited January 2006
    The second paragraph in that article is one of the worst written paragraphs I've ever read....seriously, it made my head hurt.

    Also the article says Brain was a piece of 'windows malware' when it was a boot sector virus that affects MS-DOS file allocation tables, nothing to do with windows.
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