Friday, January 20, 2006

Happy Birthday to the Virus

20 Years ago, the first computer virus was discovered, hidden in the boot sector of a floppy disk.
 
Its name was Brain, and PC users had to carry the virus around on floppy disks, inserting them in other computers. In the 1980's pre-internet era, malicious viruses had a hard time to survive and spread. They were the bird flu of computer world. Few got infected, and damage was small.

These days, thanks to the internet, the computer virus has become 'airborne', raging at high speed through the cyber world, often with devastating results . Today, more than 150,000 of these bugs from hell are registered in cyber space. Let's hope the real bird flu doesn't find its own internet (read humans, pigs, ducks or whatever) to travel arround.
 
The definition of our celebrated primate, party boy "Brain", is available on F-Secure's virus database.

1 comment:

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