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 infected his university decades earlier.

The virus, called Malaga viruswas mostly harmless. But the challenge of defeating it sparked Quintero’s passion for cybersecurity, ultimately leading him to found VirusTotala startup that Google acquired in 2012. This acquisition brought Google’s flagship European cybersecurity center to Malaga, transforming the Spanish city into a technology hub.

All because of a little piece of malware created by someone whose identity Quintero never knew.
Moved by nostalgia and gratitude, Quintero began a search earlier this year. He asked the Spanish media to amplify his quest for tips. He dove back into the virus’s code, looking for clues that his 18-year-old self might have missed. And he finally solved the mystery, sharing his bittersweet resolution in a LinkedIn Post it went viral.

The story begins in 1992, when a young Quintero is asked by a professor to create an antivirus for the 2,610-byte program that has spread across computers at the Polytechnic of Malaga. “This challenge during my first year in college sparked a deep interest in computer viruses and security, and without it my path might have been very different,” Quintero told TechCrunch.

Quintero’s research was aided by his instincts as a programmer. Earlier this year he resigned from his role as team leader to “return to the cave, to the basement of Google”. He didn’t leave the company; instead he returned to tinker and experiment without management tasks.

This DIY mindset also led him to re-examine Virus Málaga and look for details that his 18-year-old self would have missed. First, he found fragments of a signature, but thanks to another security expert, he discovered a later variant of the virus with a much clearer clue: “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 and who claimed to have witnessed the creation of the virus by one of his classmates at the polytechnic. Many details add up, but one in particular stands out: He knew that the virus’s hidden message – called a payload, in cybersecurity terms – was a statement condemning the Basque terrorist group ETA, a fact Quintero had never revealed.

The informant then gave Quintero a name – Antonio Astorga – but also shared the news of his death.

It 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 could thank him in person, but the story doesn’t end there. Quintero’s LinkedIn post sheds new light on the legacy of a “brilliant colleague who deserves to be recognized as a cybersecurity pioneer in Malaga” – and not just for helping Quintero discover his calling.

According to his friend, the Astorga virus had no other purpose than to spread his anti-terrorism message and prove that he was a programmer. Like Quintero’s career, Astorga’s interest in computers continued and he became a computer science teacher at a high school that named its computer science class in his memory.

Astorga’s legacy lives beyond these walls as well, and not just through its students. One of his sons, Sergio, is a recent software engineering graduate who is interested in cybersecurity and quantum computing – a meaningful connection for Quintero. “Being able to complete this circle now and see new generations build on this is deeply meaningful to me,” Quintero said.

For Quintero, who suspects that their paths will cross again, Sergio is “very representative of the talent that is being formed today in Malaga”. This, in turn, is the result of VirusTotal forming the root of what was ultimately became Google’s security engineering center (GSEC) and by leading collaborations with the University of Malaga which have made the city a true hub of cybersecurity talent.