World's First Virus Came from Lahore Pakistan ( See Video )

[Mian Hassan]

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its 10 min video..... very fascinating stuff have a look.

[Mian Hassan]

It tells you how intelligent people we have in Pakistan sitting who can't even find a job

[haroonrasheed320]

it also tells how intelligent people are but unforunately don't use their intelligence for the right purpose.

[Eagle_Eye]

The brothers who started brain net ISP in Pakistan..... Its well documented.

[W63L35]

Just in case, you did not know! :)

lnedOWfPKT0

[pakistanalltheway]

yeah came across this a while ago

[Foozee]

lol awesome

[AZ]

JEE OYE! :butt

[ElRaja]

nice vid, i knew about brain, but never seen the video before.

i used to use brain dial up internet in pindi in the late 90s. i think it was 600 ruppees a month for 30 hours.

have to say the editing and soundtrack are awesome, make lahore look like a really romantic place.

[shahrukh619]

I think it was the first Virus created right?

[MR__KHAN__JI]

They look so proud....

[Itachi]

Hats off to the geniuses.

Read an article about them few years ago. I guess this is the only computer virus which came with the phone no. Of the creator?

[Itachi]

I think it was the first Virus created right?

nope. It was the 1st ms dos virus.

[shahrukh619]

What about Asher?

[Aly]

If they are the owners of brain net then let me tell you that the internet service has become almost obsolete now

Hah..those good old days of using unlimited dial up internet for as much as 600 rs per month

[AZ]

^ I remember going to the WOL Net office in Barkat Market at 2 am to buy the 100 rupee scratch cards :asif

Those were certainly the days...

[ilovebouncers]

haha that WOL net office used to be brain net's office before...

[mate1]

The guys name was Ashar. Brain computers at the start of 90s,

[ahamedirshad123]

Twenty-five years ago, students at the University of Delaware began experiencing strange symptoms: temporary memory loss, a lethargic drive, and fits of rage. This wasn’t just any old flu—it was the world’s first personal computer virus. Known as Brain, the bug destroyed memory, slowed the hard drive, and hid a short copyright message in the boot sector, introducing the world to two soon-to-be hacker celebrities.

In 1986, coders Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi were just 17 and 24, respectively, running a computer store in Lahore, Pakistan. When they discovered that customers were circulating illegal copies of software they’d written, the brothers decided to retaliate. Brain was their attempt to scare pirates straight, but, as the creators tell it, the virus was never intended to be malicious. In a 2011 interview with F-Secure, a Finnish anti-virus company, the brothers called the bug a “friendly virus,” one that “was not made to destroy any data.” Why else would they have stamped the virus code with their names, their phone numbers, and the address of their shop?

“The idea was that only if the program was illegally copied would the virus load,” Amjad said in a Pakistani TV interview a few years ago. The Alvis also had an ingenious method for keeping track of how far the virus had spread. “[We] had a ‘counter’ in the program, which could keep track of all copies made and when they were made.”
Outbreak

The brothers claim they never knew that Brain would grow into a monster beyond their control. But a 1988 TIME magazine article reveals a more complicated truth: As concerned as they were with piracy of their own software, that didn’t stop them from making and selling bootleg copies of other expensive programs, such as Lotus 1-2-3. In fact, the ethics of their computer vigilantism are a little murky. Computer software isn’t copyright protected in Pakistan, Basit has argued in interviews, so therefore it’s not piracy for people to trade bootleg disks.

Under that rationale, the brothers sold clean bootleg copies to Pakistanis—and virus-infected versions to American students and backpackers. When Americans flew home and attempted to copy the programs, they ended up infecting every floppy disc subsequently inserted into their computers, even discs that had nothing to do with the original program.

Shortly after the University of Delaware outbreak, Brain began popping up at other universities, and then at newspapers. The New York Times reported that a “rogue computer program” had hit the Providence Journal-Bulletin, though the “damage was limited to one reporter losing several months of work contained on a floppy disk.”

While there was never any legal action, the media response was explosive. Basit and Amjad began receiving calls from all over the world. They were as surprised as anyone that their little experiment had traveled so far. After all, unlike today’s computer viruses, which spread at lightning speed, Brain had to transmit itself the old-fashioned way—through human carriers toting around 5.25-inch floppy discs.

But the binary genie was out of the bottle. Today, there are more than a million viruses vying to infect your computer; it’s estimated that half of all PCs are or have been infected. Consumers shell out more than $4 billion per year for software to fight these digital dragons.

As for the brothers, the virus hasn’t been bad for business. Their company, Brain Net, is now the largest Internet service provider in Pakistan. While they maintain that they never meant to hurt anyone, they have nevertheless embraced Brain as a device that exposed the global nature of piracy. “The virus could not have spread unless people were copying the software illegally,” Amjad said during his Pakistani TV interview.

The brothers, who told reporters that they stopped selling contaminated software sometime in 1987, are still based at the same address in Lahore—the one stamped into Brain’s code.

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/140879#ixzz25liDY37S
--brought to you by mental_floss!

[pakistanalltheway]

lol heard about this

[ElRaja]

yeah, theres youtube video too

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on a side note, my first internet connection was brain net.