Word: alvy
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Dates: during 1988-1988
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Amjad Farooq Alvi, 26, and Basit Farooq Alvi, 19, a pair of self-taught computer experts, are brothers who were raised in a middle-class suburb of Lahore. Amjad is the proprietor of the Brain computer shop. By all accounts he is the stronger programmer. After graduating from Punjab University with a degree in physics, he began devouring electronics texts and teaching himself the rudiments of computer repair and programming. For several years, he earned a living by fixing personal computers. By 1985 he had switched to programming, producing customized software that was, to his dismay, copied and used without...
...with the idea of creating a virus, a self- replicating program that would "infect" an unauthorized user's computer, disrupt his operations and force him to contact Amjad for repairs. Says brother Basit: "He wanted a way to detect piracy, to catch someone who copies." Meanwhile, however, the Alvi brothers had started doing some copying of their own, making bootleg duplicates of American programs and selling them at steep discounts. Eventually, they started injecting the same virus into some of those program disks as well...
...Alvi brothers say they stopped selling contaminated software sometime in 1987, satisfied that they had taught the software pirates a lesson. Nobody knows precisely how much damage their little experiment caused, but everyone agrees that it was an impressive piece of work. "This virus is elegant," says John McAfee of the InterPath computer company, expressing grudging respect for its creator. "I don't admire what he did, but I admire the way he did it. He may be the best virus designer the world has ever seen...