BRAIN: OUR FIRST VIRUS

Author: Tracy Ye

Editors: Hwi-On Lee and Zhengze Ye

Artist: Susan Wu

What is a computer virus? You may rightfully assume it is made maliciously since modern viruses are known for tampering with systems, destroying files, and even ransoming money, but, by definition, a computer virus, including both disruptive and harmless type, is a type of malware code that can replicate itself onto the devices and programs it infects. According to the definition, it may not surprise you to learn that the computer virus, Brain, which is considered by some to be the first computer virus due to its targeting of the popular IBM PC and MSDOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), was harmless. In fact, its conception was anything but malicious rather it was created to punish pirates.

Brain was created in January of 1986 in Chah Miran of Lahore Pakistan The authors were two brothers Basit Farooq Alvi (17) and Amajad Farooq Alvi (24) working in a computer store They created a heart-monitoring program for the IBM PC when they realized it was being pirated, or illegally distributed for free. Wanting to punish the pirates, they created a virus that would copy itself onto the floppy disks with the pirated product. Brain worked by replacing the boot sector of the floppy disk with the virus, which would then display the message that the Brain virus eventuallybecame famous for:

Welcome to the Dungeon

(c) 1986 Basit & Amjad (pvt) Ltd

BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES

730 NIZAB BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN

LAHORE-PAKISTAN

PHONE :430791,443248,280530.

Beware of this VIRUS Contact us for vaccination $#@%$@!!

Another slightly modified message that could pop up was: Welcome to the Dungeon

(c) 1986 Brain & Amjads (pvt) Ltd.

VIRUS SHOE RECORD v9.0

Dedicated to the dynamic memories of millions of virus who are no longer with us todayThanks GOODNESS!!

BEWARE OF THE er VIRUS

:This program is catching program follows after these messages $#@%$@!!

Adventure in Math and Technology

In both messages, the receiver would be directed to contact the brothers, and the location provided was later verified to be their store. Although the message looks threatening, the virus itself is relatively harmless. In some cases, the virus would go completely undetected. This led to the Brain virus becoming the first stealth virus, or a virus that can blend in and evade system debugging programs This ability was partially a result of Brain’s non-destructive nature Aside from the message, the only notable change the virus would make to the infected device was that it would make seven kilobytes of memory unavailable, make the floppy disk drive slightly slower, and change the disk label into © Brain or © ashar The other factor was Brain’s ability to mask its presence by showing a copy of the original boot sector instead of the virus whenever a debugging attempt was made.

The brothers Basit and Amajad would go on to tell Time magazine that they had simply made the virus to find a few pirates, and never expected to be receiving over 100,000 calls from all over the world Originating in Pakistan, the brothers would find themselves taking calls all the way from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and even Hong Kong. Although the original virus was not made with the intention of being malicious or harmful, copycat viruses would soon pop up using Brain’s same detection evasion methods, but this time, for the worse