Prompt's TechBlog
Happy birthday PC virus, happy birthday to you!
23 January 2006
Posted by Dave Wilby
Guess what? The first PC virus was born 20 years ago, possibly to the day.
If you're a grumpy old man like myself, you can now add "Eeeh, I've got computer viruses older than you!" to your list of cantankerous mutterings reserved for policemen, traffic wardens, CTOs and the like.
In case you were wondering, the very first of 150,000 PC viruses (at last count) was discovered in the wild in 1986 and was called Brain. It wasn't particularly nasty though, and could only travel about on 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. [Remember those? Oooh, this Internet lark was all fields etc... etc...]
Brain is of course still alive and self-propagating happily in her special hermetically sealed enclosure in a quiet corner of Whipsnade.
If you're a grumpy old man like myself, you can now add "Eeeh, I've got computer viruses older than you!" to your list of cantankerous mutterings reserved for policemen, traffic wardens, CTOs and the like.
In case you were wondering, the very first of 150,000 PC viruses (at last count) was discovered in the wild in 1986 and was called Brain. It wasn't particularly nasty though, and could only travel about on 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. [Remember those? Oooh, this Internet lark was all fields etc... etc...]
Brain is of course still alive and self-propagating happily in her special hermetically sealed enclosure in a quiet corner of Whipsnade.
# posted by Dave Wilby at 5:22 PM 
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