As the world of sport awaits the official opening of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio tomorrow, any talk of viruses is restricted to concerns surrounding the mosquito-borne, human-infecting
Zika virus
, with numerous
athletes having withdrawn
from the Games over infection fears and experts
calling
for the Games to be moved, while others have
played down
the risks.
22 years ago, it was a winter Olympic year, and the Games, held in Lillehammer, Norway, brought with them a virus in digital form. The Olympic virus (a.k.a. Olympic Aid) was suspected of having infected the computer systems of the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics – although fortunately this turned out not to be the case.
In March 1994, Mikko Hyppönen provided a detailed analysis of the virus for
VB
, looking at the
Swedish virus-writing group that was behind it, and the virus operation and code.
Mikko’s article can be read
here
in HTML-format, or downloaded
here
as a PDF.
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