John McAfee is one of the pioneers of antivirus software. Starting in the late ’60s, he did programming and systems work for a number of high-profile ventures including NASA, Univac, Xerox, and Lockheed Martin.
It was while working at Lockheed in the 1980s that he was given a computer virus known as the Pakistani Brain to work with. The Brain was created by a software firm in Pakistan and was the first known virus to affect MS-DOS. It worked by replacing the boot sector of a floppy disk with a startup error message and a phone number to call. The creator’s intention of the brain was to stop illegal distribution and copying of their medical software however, the virus had a major design flaw. It was supposed to just infect users that were pirating their software but instead also infected legitimate users as well, causing, as you can imagine, a lot of negative feedback from customers and the press!
McAfee started work on a piece of software that could scan for and stop the virus. He started McAfee Associates in 1987 to further research and develop antivirus software and by 1989 had quit Lockheed altogether to focus on his company. He left McAfee in 1994 and went on to other ventures, mostly unsuccessful, but always on the cutting edge, such as a company he started in the ’90s to develop a pretty sophisticated chat program called PowWow. It went nowhere, mostly thanks to the efforts of AT&T, it seems. His latest ventures have gone in an entirely different direction, trying to develop natural antibiotics.
The iconic company that bears his name is still at the forefront of antivirus software and will probably continue to be, as it seems unlikely viruses and malware will stop being spawned.