Hello and welcome back to malicious life. My name is Ren Levy.

In the previous episode we met the first computer virus programs.

Engineers such as Bob Thomas who tried to stretch the limits of what was possible

in the brave new world of computers.

During the 1980s with the rise of the personal computer

these experts were cast aside to make room

for a growing number of amateur programmers who had discovered how easy

it was to create a program capable of self-replication. Viruses turned from an esoteric rumor traveling by word of mouth throughout the halls of academia and industry into an absolute fact, with dozens of new viruses being discovered every day.

One such virus was discovered in late 1989 in a large number of computers in the US and Europe.

Security experts who analysed the new virus identified a message hidden inside it as plain text.

The message read, Eddie lives somewhere in time.

Heavy metal fans would have an easy time identifying the reference.

Eddie was the mascot of the famous heavy metal band Iron Maiden and somewhere in time was

their sixth album.

The hidden message gave the new virus its name, Eddie.

Finding hidden messages in viruses was rather common back then.

These were usually addressed to other virus authors or to the security analysts themselves.

However, Eddie was an exceptional virus due to its sophisticated and unusually cruel payload.

Harmful viruses that erase the data on the infected machines were rare but not unheard of.

Analysts were already familiar with destructive viruses such as Lehi,

which erased the data in every four floppy disk it infected, or the Jerusalem virus that was programmed to raise data every

Friday the 13th. These were nasty viruses but a smart user who kept proper

...