Brain: Searching for the first PC virus in Pakistan

Here is 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 the brothers have given a video interview about the virus, which spread around the world via floppy disks.

In the video Amjad and Basit reveal that Brain was not meant to be a destructive virus, which is why they even included their phone numbers in the virus code.

Their motive for writing the virus was to check the multi-tasking functionality in the new DOS operating system and to see if there were any security vulnerabilities in DOS compared to other operating systems such as Unix. Soon they started getting phone calls from as far as the United States and Australia.