Virus Found!

The first “virus infection” on the Internet happened in 1987, with the now-infamous Internet Worm virtually bringing the Net down. But the Worm, technically speaking, is not a virus. It’s a worm. The first virus is

cBrain, created by two programmer brothers from across the border.

cBrain was a DOS-based boot sector virus, which didn’t create too much of a havoc. For one, computing was still a restricted activity and for another, the only way it could spread was by being transferred from one floppy to another. Besides, cBrain intrinsically was not created to destroy data. It was a technology demonstrator, if you will.

cBrain gave birth to two competing industries. Well, not exactly. It gave birth to the anti-virus industry, and to the dark cult of the virus creator. And since then the two have been competing with each other, trying to circumvent each others’ products!

Cut to 1999 and you have a long, long list of viruses that use increasingly innovative techniques to spread themselves, and infect and destroy data. There’s

ExploreZip, there’s Melissa, and its many variants, and currently, there’s

FunLove. Unlike in the case of cBrain, these viruses find it extremely easy to infect millions and millions of computers the world over within a few days of being

released–thanks to the increasing use of the Internet and e-mail.