Linux Viruses and Such

• Malware Timeline (cont'd)

• 1983: Film “War Games” introduced the public to the concept of a computer backdoor, and of war dialers.

• 1986: First MS-DOS virus, Brain, by brothers Basit and Amjad Alvi of Lahore, Pakistan. Infected floppy boot sectors.

• 1987: First file infector, Lehigh (infected command.com). Later, Suriv-02 was first .EXE infector (later reworked as "Jerusalem").

• 1987: First e-mail worm, Christmas Exec, for IBM VM/CMS mainframes, forced shutdown of several systems.

• 1987: U. of Wellington student unleashed Stoned, the first MS-DOS MBR virus. (Displayed “Your PC is now stoned!” and “Legalise Marijuana!”)

Notes: