<P> The first IBM PC compatible "in the wild" computer virus, and one of the first real widespread infections, was "Brain" in 1986 . From then, the number of viruses has grown exponentially . Most of the computer viruses written in the early and mid-1980s were limited to self - reproduction and had no specific damage routine built into the code . That changed when more and more programmers became acquainted with computer virus programming and created viruses that manipulated or even destroyed data on infected computers . </P> <P> Before internet connectivity was widespread, computer viruses were typically spread by infected floppy disks . Antivirus software came into use, but was updated relatively infrequently . During this time, virus checkers essentially had to check executable files and the boot sectors of floppy disks and hard disks . However, as internet usage became common, viruses began to spread online . </P> <P> There are competing claims for the innovator of the first antivirus product . Possibly, the first publicly documented removal of an "in the wild" computer virus (i.e. the "Vienna virus") was performed by Bernd Fix in 1987 . </P> <P> In 1987, Andreas Lüning and Kai Figge founded G Data Software and released their first antivirus product for the Atari ST platform . Dubiously, they later also produced Virus Construction Kits . In 1987, the Ultimate Virus Killer (UVK) was also released . This was the de facto industry standard virus killer for the Atari ST and Atari Falcon, the last version of which (version 9.0) was released in April 2004 . In 1987, in the United States, John McAfee founded the McAfee company (now part of Intel Security) and, at the end of that year, he released the first version of VirusScan . Also in 1987 (in Czechoslovakia), Peter Paško, Rudolf Hrubý, and Miroslav Trnka created the first version of NOD antivirus . </P>

Who invented the first antivirus software and when was it written