The inventor of the antivirus software
is from Bochum

Once upon a time in the middle of the Ruhr area, Kai Figge and Andreas Lüning, two young computer science students, met in a copy shop. Both were technically minded and had a soft spot for the 1985 Atari ST home computer. They agreed that this computer had potential, but there was little software available – and they wanted to change that for the fast-growing fan community.

 

While Germany was still devided by the Berlin Wall, Gorbatschow became General Secretary of the CPSU and "Live is Life" was a big hit in Clubs around the globe, the two started with their first product, which was small but useful. The Atari forgot the time after each power down which was annoying but not only for the two inventors. They wrote a program, linked it to a clock and plugged it into their home computer. From then on, the Atari always knew what time it was. During this premiere, the advantages of the parental summerhouse were also evident, since in addition to the software, clocks were needed which had to be stored until dispatch.

 

The inventors of antivirus

Shortly afterwards, after overcoming their parents concerns that they would not learn anything worthwhile without university studies, the two company founders succeeded in creating a groundbreaking invention without which no single computer with Internet access would be safe. In 1987, Andreas Lüning discovered two of the first boot sector viruses in circulation on the diskettes of his Atari ST home computer. This was the reason to write a program for checking and cleaning the diskettes and to distribute it to other Atari ST users – born was the world's first commercial antivirus program, the nucleus of the G DATA success story.

 

Andreas Lüning remembers: "Our focus was the fun of programming, we had successfully founded a business from our hobby. The idea of writing an anti-virus program was a coincidence: without the infection of my floppy disk collection we would not have thought of it. But Kai immediately recognized the great potential behind it. Of course, every Atari ST owner had great interest in keeping his computer free of malware. Moreover, there was not a single competitor in this area. In fact, we invented the virus protection program and were the first to market it. With our AntiVirusKit for MS-DOS with its own graphical user interface , it was clear for the first time that we had the greatest expertise and success in this field of business."