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Their targets vary: some delete or modify files, some zap the hard disk; some, even, release a virus or a worm when they explode. Their only common feature is the single blast of planned destruction.

What had started out as simple self-replicating programs had grown into a full-blown threat to computer security. Those who had warned about the potential danger for the past two years were entitled to say, ‘I told you so.’

But the prophecies were self-fulfilling. The choice of the term ‘virus’ to describe quite unremarkable programs glamorized the mundane; the relentless promotion of the presumed threat put ideas in the minds of potential virus writers; the publicity given the concept ensured that the writer’s progeny would become known and discussed. Even if the writer himself remained anonymous, he would know that his creative offspring would become famous.

The computer underworld is populated with young men (and almost no women) who live out their fantasies of power and glory on a keyboard. Most are single. That some young men find computing a substitute for sexual activity is probably incontrovertible. Just as a handle will often hide a shy and frightened fifteen-year-old, an obsession with computing to the exclusion of all else may represent security for a sexually insecure youngster. The computer is his partner, his handle is his real self . . . and the virus he writes is the child of his real self and his partner.

A German virus writer once said: ‘You feel something wonderful has happened when you’ve produced one. You’ve created something which lives. You don’t know where it will go or what it will do, but you know it will live on.’ He was talking about his new virus.

The anti-virus industry, of course, had no thoughts of creating a hobby for insecure technology wizards when it began its campaign of publicity and hype in 1987 and 1988. But there was little question that by the end of 1989 a real threat to computer systems had been created, posed by what was indeed becoming a plague of viruses. The number of catalogued viruses in the West would grow exponentially: from thirty-odd in mid-1988, to a hundred at the end of 1989, 500 in 1990 and over 1,000 by 1991. Along the way the anti-virus industry would lose all control of the plague – its security software overwhelmed, its confidence battered by the sheer number of new viruses

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