BRAIN: Searching for the first PC virus in Pakistan

[compak]

A 10-minute video reportage about Mikko Hypponen's trip to Lahore, Pakistan, to find the authors of the first PC virus "Brain". This is the first time Amjad Farooq Alvi and Basit Farooq Alvi have given a video interview about the virus, which spread around the world via floppy disks in 1986.

 

[FreekiN]

That video gave a very nice view of Lahore.

 

[DesiGuy]

nice................

 

[Burger Boy]

Is this something to be proud of or to be ashamed of.

Oh well....at least Pakistanis can say "beware, we invented the computer virus" the next time the Indian Cyber Army plans an attack.

 

[hindukush]

jahan tak waqt jai gaa,humay agay hi pai gaa
jebih tareekh nai rekha hai is ka naam Pakistan

 

[F86 Saber]

Hey i've been to their office a lot of times as i have lived in Allam Iqbal Town for over 17 years, it is in Abid Block i believe opposite to the famous Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park. They were the pioneer ISP in Pakistan and very expensive back in the days.

 

[T-Faz]

Brain is the oldest known virus on the PC platform and was first detected in 1986. Several variants of the virus are known and most of them are fairly harmless. It runs on IBM-PCs and compatibles running PC-DOS or IBM-DOS operating system.

Brain is a boot sector virus, infecting the first sector of floppies as they are inserted into an infected computer. Brain is only a few kilobytes in size and most of it is located in sectors that are marked as "bad" in the FAT. Also the original boot sector is stored in these sectors.

One of the most interesting details regarding the Brain virus is the following text, which appears inside it:

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............ $#@%$@!!

There are many variants of the virus with different texts. Here is another version:

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 today -
Thanks GOODNESS!! BEWARE OF THE er..VIRUS :This program is catching
program follows after these messeges..... $#@%$@!!

Infection

Before Brain infects diskettes, it looks for a “signature”. This makes it possible to “inoculate” against it by putting the signature in the correct place of the boot sector of a clean floppy. Such floppies would not get infected even if they are insterted into an infected computer.

Stealth

The Brain virus tries to hide from detection by hooking interrupt 13 which is used to read the hard drive. When an attempt is made to read an infected boot sector, Brain will show you the original boot sector instead. This means that if you look at the boot sector using DEBUG or any similar program, everything will look normal, if the virus is active in memory. This means that Brain was not only the first PC virus, it was also the first rootkit.

Activity

The major effect of this fairly harmless virus is a change of the disk label (the "name" of the disk). The volume label is changed to read: "©Brain"

 

[T-Faz]

Documentary examines the inception of PC viruses 25 years ago​

It was in 1986 that brothers Basit and Amjad Farooq circulated a floppy disk carrying Brain -- the first PC virus in history.

F-Secure researcher Mikko Hypponen was one of the early handful of self-styled virus hunters. When Hypponen reverse engineered Brain, he found buried in the code a block of text with the Farooq brothers' names, phone number and address, near Lahore Railway Station, Lahore, Pakistan.

Hypponen recently traveled to Pakistan and found the Farooq brothers 25 years later working at the same address. Here is an exclusive USA TODAY release of a video documentary, produced by F-Secure, revealing what Hypponen learned on his visit:

Read More.

 

[T-Faz]

This thread is quite apt especially looking at the current condition of this website.

 

[Hyde]

Wonderful video! - Since most of us already know the first computer virus was created in Pakistan. One person in this video visits Pakistan to interview the creators of the first computer Virus and asks relevant questions about it.