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Going Viral: How Two Pakistani Brothers Created the First PC Virus
Jason Kersten
filed under: technology
Before vigilante hackers like Anonymous tamed the Internet, two brothers started their own fight against software piracy. Their weapon: the first PC virus.
In 1986, 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.
At the time, 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.
This article originally appeared in mental_floss magazine, available wherever brilliant/lots of magazines are sold. Get a free issue here!
Going Viral: How Two Pakistani Brothers Created the First PC Virus | Mental Floss
Learning from suicide blasts
By Salman Siddiqui
Published: July 26, 2010
The software Usmani has developed can simulate suicide bomb explosions in three dimensions.
KARACHI: Even though catching suicide bombers may be difficult, it is possible to minimise casualties and injuries from their attacks by putting in place pre-emptive measures based on studying past explosions, says a 32-year-old Pakistani scientist.
Zeeshan-ul-Hassan Usmani, who currently teaches at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology in Topi, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, completed his PhD in computer science from the US-based Florida Institute of Technology where he went to study on a Fulbright scholarship. His PhD topic, “Modelling and Simulation of Explosion Effectiveness as a Function of Blast and Crowd Characteristics,” was inspired by a desire to save lives, Usmani says. The software Usmani has developed can simulate suicide bomb explosions in three dimensions. The computer programme has wide-ranging applications, including blast forensics and post-disaster management.
It was this software which helped Usmani figure out that the Ashura blast in Karachi was planted and not the work of a suicide bomber. Soon after the blast, the authorities claimed that it was a suicide attack. However, based on post-blast forensic signatures and injury patterns, Usmani demonstrated that it was a planted explosive.
Usmani has worked as a consultant for the Sindh police, as well as the Anti Narcotics Force. He is now looking at the possibility of working on a project for the Punjab government.
According to Usmani’s research, just by changing the way a crowd of people stand near a suicide bomber can reduce deaths by 12 per cent and injuries by seven per cent on average.
“The average deadliest crowd formation for casualties was found to be the zigzag scenario like people at a concert, where 30 per cent of the participants are in the lethal zone and 45 per cent in the injury zone. Row-wise crowd formations were found to be the best for reducing the effectiveness of an attack, with on average 18 per cent of the crowd in the lethal zone and 38 per cent in the injury zone,” the scientist says.
His simulation software incorporates the effects of stampedes, which usually occur when people start running in the same direction following an attack. The analysis also shows that announcing the threat of a suicide blast in a crowd could result in higher casualties.
What surprises Usmani is that in spite of 260 bombings and 3,841 fatalities since 1995, the authorities are not studying data or incorporating changes that could minimise the effects of these deadly attacks.
“Despite a large number of such blasts, it seems we’re bent upon not learning anything from them. Even today a large number of buildings which were struck in the past don’t incorporate any changes to their design or increase exit doors,” Usmani says. He suggests that his software can be used in identifying whether a building such as a mosque or imambargah have proper safety measures in place.
The backbone of the software Usmani has developed is the database, which comprises bombing and injury details from records of suicide bombing incidents in Pakistan, beginning November 15, 1995 to the present day. Usmani also maintains the count on his online portal Home | PakistanBodyCount.org
“The study is based on the records of patients compiled painstakingly from hospitals, which in most cases include medico legal reports, X-rays, electrocardiograms, post-traumatic stress disorder profiles, and injury types and characteristics. The database also contains blast characteristics, such as explosives type, weight, shape, fragmentation signatures, and temperature of the day, crowd characteristics, such as crowd density, gender, age ratio, weight, and the distance from the bomber with plus or minus two feet of error,” says Usmani.
One very interesting finding which Usmani was able to make through this data was that attacks claimed by different militant groups have caused different wounds.
“In a typical suicide blast in Pakistan, we have at least four times more punctured wounds, two times more injuries on the lower limbs, and five times more injuries on the human torso, compared to a non suicidal blast,” says Usmani.
According to the scientist, suicide attacks claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) have 35 per cent laceration and eight per cent punctured wounds rate, while those claimed by Harkatul Mujahideen (HM) have 31 per cent abrasion rate compared to 13 per cent of the LJ. On the other hand, the laceration rate of attacks claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the HM is quite similar. The BLA suicide attacks have more than 30 per cent torso injuries compared to eight per cent in the HM and 20 per cent LJ attacks. Usmani claims: “If you give me the description of wounds, I can provide you with the name of the probable culprits”.
Usmani’s programme can also predict whether security measures put in place to thwart terrorist attacks at high-profile targets, such as the Presidential House, are effective. In most cases, Usmani says, his analysis is that “the heavy road blocks and barbed wires put in place [for security] will in fact act as shrapnel and may seriously damage or destroy the buildings”. Commenting on why global products such as Injury 8.1 or Blast/FX are unable to match his software, Usmani says that such applications are either restricted to the US army/military domain or are too expensive (usually $25,000 per licence) to be used in Pakistan. “On the other hand, my product can perform similar or even better analysis in case of a suicide attack for as low as Rs100,000 to Rs200,000 per assignment.”
Hinting at the poor forensic standards of our law enforcement authorities, Usmani says that most police officials hide vital data in the name of confidentiality. “However, the truth is that in most cases they don’t even keep a record of the data, to say nothing about determining patterns and analysis.”
To correct this state of affairs, Usmani says there is a dire need to establish a suicide bombing research centre (SBRC) that is independent and takes input from all stakeholders, including hospitals, agencies, police and the media, to determine patterns in suicide attacks. Sadly, “Pakistan today is the best place on earth to study suicide bombings,” he says. “In fact, we could even provide consultation to the world in this area.”
However helpful the software might be, according to the director of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies Muhammad Amir Rana, “our investigators don’t have the capacity to use such high-end tools”. He cites the example of Chinese scanners installed by the authorities at the gateway of Islamabad to check vehicles for bombs, which according to Rana, the police haven’t been able to operate properly.
“Also, simple things such as computerisation of the process of registering an FIR haven’t seen the light of day,” he says. Nevertheless, the counter-terrorism expert believes that if Pakistan is to win the war against militancy, all possible tools, including the one created by Usmani, would have to be employed.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 26th, 2010.
Learning from suicide blasts – The Express Tribune
so don't think I'm shooing you away. Anything to help me sustain this thread is welcomed, though I'd be even more welcoming of shorter articles
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