In 1984 computer pioneer Ken Thompson wrote one of the seminal works of computer security, Reflections on Trusting Trust [PDF]. In it he postulated putting a trojan horse inside a compiler as a means of infecting software compiled by it. 25 years later somebody has finally done just that. Researchers at anti-virus house Sophos have discovered a virus that places a backdoor into applications compiled with the Delphi language. They've identified at least 3000 separate Delphi applications that have had this backdoor compiled into them so far, including banking programs and programs used for cellphone programming.
posted by scalefree on Aug 20, 2009 - 52 comments

On January 19, 1986, the first PC virus — Brain — was detected. It was virtually harmless, and the Pakistani creators claim that it was only intended to protect their copyrights. (They did, after all, include their own address and phone number in the machine code.) In the past 20 years, though, both creating viruses and destroying them have become billion-dollar industries.
posted by Plutor on Jan 19, 2006 - 48 comments

for the bookmarks - free browser-embedded antivirus [IE only, I assume Windows only]
posted by Pretty_Generic on Oct 4, 2005 - 30 comments

Microsoft considering anti-virus support and why we should care.
posted by GriffX on Dec 11, 2001 - 13 comments

Rob Rosenberger, editor of Vmyths.com, writes that three uniformed federal police visited him in the middle of the night and asked that he not to publish an upcoming column that would embarrass anti-virus vendor for "national security reasons." From late-October, but intriguing.
posted by tranquileye on Nov 8, 2001 - 10 comments

Those British boys at it again. It was like this during the war, y'know. I remember my old mate Alan Turing beating the system in much the same way. Saved the world he did. Tally-ho.
posted by feelinglistless on Apr 24, 2001 - 7 comments

The bastards at Symantec are now charging for virus updates. They've just lost a customer, a hopefully many more. The feedback form is here if you feel the need to bitch at them.
posted by skallas on Aug 12, 2000 - 20 comments