The Evolution of Cyber Crime!

Cybercrime is thriving all over the internet-it has made its own territory! Millions of people across the world make use of technology to carry out day-to-day activities like check their accounts, shop online or perform financial transactions. Hackers proactively take charge, so that they don’t miss out any single chance of exploiting the naïve gullibility of users. Cyber-criminal activities have reportedly grown in past few years. Every single day a ton of innocent users become the victim of the vicious schemes of cyber criminals.

The evolution of cybercrime has grown tremendously over the past couple years. A lot of us might not be aware, but Cybercrime is spreading since the early days of Internet. We often live under a misconception that it is a boom of the present, but instead, it’s a blast from the past. Well, it’s true to some extent, proves the increasing number of cybercriminal activities reported daily. Did you know that the first PC virus was developed in the early 80’s period? The bummer isn’t it? Let’s know the full story here!

The Story of first PC Virus-BRAIN

Mikko Hypponen, CRO at a well know security organization, went on a quest to track down the original authors of first PC virus ever developed in history. BRAIN was the first PC virus created by two Pakistani brothers Basit and Amjad almost 30 years ago- floppy disks era. In 2011, Mikko traveled all the way long to Pakistan in order to interview the makers of the virus. After tracking the address, he finally had a chance to have few words of discussion with the authors.

The first question which Mikko fired was “Why did you write BRAIN?”. The brothers mutually replied “We created this virus to experiment a few things, to explore the security loopholes of operating system in the contrast of LINUX or UNIX. DOS was something new at that time, so just out of curiosity to explore issues related to DOS, how vulnerable it is we wrote this particular piece of code”. They further added, “Also at the same time we needed to find out how the floppies other programs and software moves around the system, like if we create some virus will it spread all around the world or will stay restricted amongst a certain group of people”.

Mikko further enquired “Were you aware of any other virus at that time?”. The brothers stated “No we were not aware. BRAIN was a very friendly virus which was not created to cause any sort of destruction or gain any monetary benefits from users.”

You can watch the full interview here:

Conclusion

As technology evolves, cyber criminals are able to make money in new ways, hide their tracks and remain hidden in the shadows. From the late 1980s, all the way to early 2000s, online hacking, and malware writing wasn’t all about money. It was about curiosity, fame and causing havoc. Cybercrime is constantly evolving, but so are the defenses to counter it. It is up to all of us to ensure those defenses are kept in place.