This is The Guardian.

by Scott J. Shapiro.

In the 1980s, there was no better place than Bulgaria for virus lovers.

The socialist country, plagued by hyperinflation, crumbling infrastructure, food and petrol rationing,

daily blackouts, packs of wild dogs in its streets, had become one of the hottest high-tech zones on the planet.

Legions of young Bulgarian programmers were tinkering on their pirated IBM PC clones,

pumping out computer viruses that managed to travel to the gleaming and prosperous West.

In 1989, an article appeared in Bulgaria's leading computer magazine,

saying the media's treatment of computer viruses was sensationalist and inaccurate.

The article, and the January issue of Bulgaria's Computer for You magazine, titled

The Truth about Computer Viruses, was written by the Selen Bonchev, a 29-year-old researcher

at the Institute of Industrial Cybernetics and Robotics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Sophia.

Fear of computer viruses Bonchev wrote was turning into mass psychosis.

Any competent programmer Bonchev claimed could tell when files are corrupted by a virus.

Infected files are bigger than uninfected files. They run slower. They do strange things,

such as play tunes, draw Christmas trees on the screen, and reboot computers.

It was hard to miss a virus. Prevention through basic cyber hygiene was simple.

Do not allow other people to use your computer, do not use suspicious software products,

do not use software products acquired illegally.

Bonchev would come to regret this article.

He had not appreciated that what may be an obvious virus to him

may not be obvious to the secretary using a computer as a typewriter.

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