How a Spanish virus brought Google to Malaga

After 33 years, Bernardo Quintero decided it was time to find the person who changed his life – the anonymous programmer who created a computer virus that had infected his university decades earlier.

The virus, called Malaga virusit was mostly harmless. But the challenge of defeating it ignited Quintero’s passion for cybersecurity, eventually leading him to found VirusTotala startup acquired by Google in 2012. This acquisition brought Google’s leading European cybersecurity center to Malaga, turning the Spanish city into a tech hub.

All because of a small malware program created by someone whose identity Quintero had never known. Moved by nostalgia and gratitude, Quintero began a search earlier this year. He asked the Spanish media to expand his search for tips. He went back through the virus code, looking for clues his 18-year-old self might have missed. And he finally solved the mystery, sharing the bittersweet resolution with a Post on LinkedIn that went viral.

The story begins in 1992, when a young Quintero was prompted by a teacher to create an antivirus for the 2610-byte program that had spread to the computers of the Polytechnic School of Malaga. “This challenge in my first year at university sparked a deep interest in computer viruses and security, and without it my path could have been very different,” Quintero told TechCrunch.

Quintero’s search was aided by his programming instincts. Earlier this year, he resigned from his team manager role to “back in the cave, in the basement of Google”. He didn’t leave the company. instead, he returned to experimentation and experimentation without managerial duties.

This jaded mindset also led him to revisit Virus Málaga and look for details he had missed years earlier. First, he found signature fragments, but thanks to another security expert, he discovered a later variant of the virus with a much clearer label: “KIKESOYYO.” “Kike soy yo” would translate to “I am Kike”, a common nickname for “Enrique”.

Around the same time, Quintero received a direct message from a man who is now the general coordinator of digital transformation for the Spanish city of Córdoba, who claimed to have seen one of his classmates at the Polytechnic create the virus. Many details were added, but one stood out in particular: the man knew that the virus’ hidden message — called a payload, in cybersecurity terms — was a statement condemning the Basque terrorist group ETA, a fact Quintero had never disclosed.

The tipster then gave Quintero a name – Antonio Astorga – but also shared the news that he had died.

This hit Quintero like a ton of bricks. Now, he could never ask Antonio about “Kike”. But he continued to follow the thread, and the twist came from Antonio’s sister, who revealed that his first name was actually Antonio Enrique. To his family, he was Kike.

Cancer took Antonio Enrique Astorga before Quintero personally thanked him, but the story doesn’t stop there. Quintero’s LinkedIn post sheds new light on the legacy of an “outstanding colleague who deserves to be recognized as a pioneer in cybersecurity in Malaga” — and not just because he helped Quintero discover his profession.

According to his friend, Astorga’s virus had no other goal than to spread his anti-terrorist message and prove himself as a developer. Mirroring Quintero’s path, Astorga’s interest in computing endured and he became a computer teacher at a secondary school that named its computer class in his memory.

Astorga’s legacy lives on beyond these walls, and not just through his students. One of his sons, Sergio, is a recent software engineering graduate with an interest in cybersecurity and quantum computing—an essential connection for Quintero. “To be able to close that circle now and see new generations build on it, that’s really important to me,” Quintero said.

For Quintero, who suspects their paths will cross again, Sergio is “very representative of the talent being formed in Malaga today”. This, in turn, is a result of VirusTotal being the root of what it is became the Google Safety Engineering Center (GSEC) and spearheading collaborations with the University of Málaga that have made the city a veritable hub of cybersecurity talent.