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AIDS, also known as Aids Info Drive or PC Cyborg Trojan, is a DOS Trojan horse whose payload mungs and encrypts the names of all directories on drive C:. It was developed by Dr. Joseph Popp (1950-2006), an evolutionary biologist with a doctorate from Harvard. The virus was isolated in 1989.
May 16, 2021 · Law enforcement traced the effort to a PO box owned by a Harvard-taught evolutionary biologist named Joseph Popp, who was conducting AIDS research at the time.
- Who Created The Aids Trojan horse?
- What Did The Aids Trojan Horse do?
- What Impact Did The Aids Ransomware have?
- Ransomware Protection
AIDS was created by a Harvard-taught evolutionary biologist named Joseph Popp, and deployed in December 1989, according to SDxCentral. The internet was in its infancy back then, but the ransomware managed to reach around 20,000 people and medical institutions. Using stolen mail subscriber lists from the World Health Organization AIDS conference and...
The floppy disks also contained a Trojan horse written in QuickBASIC 3.0. The malware was subtle, as it did not immediately encrypt the victim's files. Rather, it hijacked AUTOEXEC.BAT. AUTOEXEC.BAT, short for "automatically executed batch file", is a system file that was originally on DOS-type operating systems, and read upon startup by all versio...
Popp did not exactly get rich from deploying the world's first ransomware, since the vast majority of his targets saw no point in mailing their money to a Panama PO box. However, many victims—most of whom worked in the medical field—panicked and wiped their hard drives, losing invaluable research data. The AIDS Trojan Horse wasn't nearly as sophist...
Research shows that the US suffered 538 percent more cyberattacksin 2020 than in 2005, with ransomware being one of the most prevalent threats. We've come a long way since floppy disks. Most ransomware nowadays is delivered through phishing email campaigns, fake browser updates, and similar. When it comes to ransomware, or any other type of malware...
- Damir Mujezinovic
- Author
Jul 27, 2020 · This sneaky software was attributed to American evolutionary biologist Dr. Joseph Popp, who held a Ph.D. from Harvard. Popp was arrested for spreading the computer virus , charged with...
May 10, 2016 · An evolutionary biologist named Joseph Popp came up with a computer-based questionnaire he said would help determine patients’ risk of contracting AIDS, and he distributed 20,000 copies of it...
May 16, 2021 · Slashdot reader quonset writes: To this day no one is sure why he did it, but in 1989 a Harvard-taught evolutionary biologist named Joseph Popp mailed out 20,000 floppy discs with malware on them to people around the world.
The AIDS Trojan, or PC Cyborg, is commonly referred to as the first-ever ransomware. Because of this, Dr. Joseph Popp, the author of the AIDS Trojan, is known as "the father of ransomware." Appearing in December of 1989, Popp's ransomware differed from modern ransomware in many ways.
