Personal computing history (part 5)

So, I now have a pair of tools:
     VIMas a debugger
and
     CODEGEN as a disassembler.

What do I do with them?

Well, around this time, the company I was working for became involved with the first computer viruses.

And I had tools that would let me simulate running any software, and rip apart programs with ease.

Of course, some viruses tried to make it hard. They didn't want to be traced, or encrypted themselves, or even kept the parts of themselves that were not currently executing encrypted (i.e. decrypt the currently required subroutine before executing it, and re-encrypt it when done. This was the "Whale" virus). None of it mattered. One or two virses (like the "Whale" virus) made me create a "tweaked" version of my tools, but that was hardly even a speed bump.

And so I spent many years disassembling viruses and writing anti-virus software...