25 Years of Digital Vandalism

[xchrom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/opinion/27Gibson.html?src=fbmain

IN January 1986, Basit and Amjad Alvi, sibling programmers living near the main train station in Lahore, Pakistan, wrote a piece of code to safeguard the latest version of their heart-monitoring software from piracy. They called it Brain, and it was basically a wheel-clamp for PCs. Computers that ran their program, plus this new bit of code, would stop working after a year, though they cheerfully provided three telephone numbers, against the day. If you were a legitimate user, and could prove it, they’d unlock you.



the author has carefully thought about this -- and brings it right up to date with stuxnet.
and the possible/probable outcome of this new age.

[xchrom]

1. kick

[unc70]

2. Such code was around long before 1986

It certainly became more widespread after the IBM PC and MS-DOS, but it predates each of those products.

The most common early "safeguards" were in things like telephone switches and military communications systems which were made with secret cutoff switches or other compromises that could be activated by, for example US or UK, manufacturers in the event of a conflict involving foreign buyers.

[localroger]

3. The difference is that the new code was a virus

It didn't just protect the writer's own program, it spread itself through other software and from computer to computer all on its own as well. That wasn't really practical until enough computers were all running intercompatible software; before the PC and DOS, programs written for one computer usually wouldn't run on another, even the next model created by the same company.