Bernardo Quintero, a Google security engineering director and founder of VirusTotal, has identified the creator of a 1990s computer virus that sparked his career in cybersecurity. The "Málaga virus" infected computers at his university and a professor challenged him to neutralize it, a task that set him on the path to creating VirusTotal, which Google acquired in 2012.
After a recent social media appeal, Quintero discovered the author was Antonio Enrique Astorga, a local high school computer teacher who has since passed away. Astorga, known as "Kike," apparently created the non-malicious virus as a programming challenge. The discovery brings a 33-year-old mystery to a close, connecting the origins of Google's major cybersecurity hub in Málaga directly to an early local innovator.