The First “Virus”
The message was a jovial call to contact the brothers (the phone numbers was included), to get a “vaccination” because of an “infection” (their customers were doctors remember?). Someone implemented the 3.5 KB file on a DOS disk, and the “virus” spread like wildfire, every time someone copied or traded an illegal version of a software. The Alvi brothers were bombarded by calls from all around the world, asking them to clear up the problem. Just when authorities were about to raise a fuss about the issue, they realized that the virus actually showed the scale of the rampant piracy - even in the early days of computing, and the fuss died down. However, this was not before Time magazine branded the virus as “Pakistani Flu” and published a none too flattering article about these “malicious hackers”.