Episode 66 - Viruses and the PC

It's Spook Month on Advent of Computing! Every October we cover the more spooky, scary, and frustrating side of computers. To kick off this year we are looking at viruses again, this time with a special eye to the first infections for IBM PCs and compatible systems. Besides the technical changes, this drops us into an interesting transitionary period. Up to this point viruses had been something of an in-joke amongst hackers and computer nerds, but with the creation of viruses like Brain and VirDem we see them start to enter public awareness. Selected Sources: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/358198.358210 - Reflections on Trusting Trust http://web.archive.org/web/20060427081139/http://www.brain.net.pk/aboutus.htm - Brain Computing on Brain Virus https://archive.org/details/computervirusesh0000burg - Computer Viruses: A High-Tech Disease