John McAfee-The insane life of former fugitive and eccentric cybersecurity legend
John McAfee is an enigma.
He built one of the biggest antivirus companies to date, and yet it's what happened after this chapter of his life that made him a legend.
McAfee once lived in Belize and allegedly got caught up with drugs and other illegal activities, but that's half the story.
Here's a look into who the man once was, what he became, and where he is now.
Trust us, it's a wild ride.
John McAfee was born in the UK in the mid-1940s. His parents moved to Roanoke, Virginia, when he was young.
His early life was likely tough for the young man. His father, who worked as a road surveyor, was an alcoholic. When McAfee was 15, his father committed suicide, a fact McAfee says he wakes up with every day.
Source: Wired
McAfee went to Roanoke College, where he also took up drinking. But the younger McAfee was a shrewd entrepreneur at a young age. His first business sold magazines door to door, which he says made him a small fortune.
Source: Wired
He began working at a company that coded punch-card systems in the late '60s. This taught him the basics of early computing. Using this information, he landed a job at Missouri Pacific Railroad, where he helped the company use a newfangled IBM computer system to help calibrate train schedules.
While at Missouri Pacific Railroad he began to dabble with harder drugs. He would go to work many days while tripping on LSD, according to Wired. One day he was sold a bag of a psychedelic known as DMT. As Wired reported, McAfee snorted a line of the drug, felt nothing, and then decided to do the whole bag. Then all hell broke loose. He freaked out, ran outside, and hid behind a trashcan.
People asked him questions, but he didn’t understand what they were saying. The computer was spitting out train schedules to the moon; he couldn’t make sense of it. He ended up behind a garbage can in downtown St. Louis, hearing voices and desperately hoping that nobody would look at him. He never went back to Missouri Pacific. Part of him believes he’s still on that trip, that everything since has been one giant hallucination and that one day he’ll snap out of it and find himself back on his couch in St. Louis, listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
McAfee moved to Silicon Valley in the 1970s. He held numerous jobs at various tech companies (including a stint at NASA’s Institute for Space Studies), all the while abusing drugs and alcohol. It wasn’t until 1983 that he got sober. He was working at the company Omex, and found his daily routine to be snorting coke at his desk and drinking a bottle of scotch, according to Wired. He says he felt alone and scared, and finally decided to seek help.
Source: NBC San Diego, Wired
In the 1980s, McAfee worked at Lockheed. At the time, computers were still relatively new. In 1986 the first computer virus hit PCs. He read about these new programs that infiltrated computers and decided to start his own company to fight back.
McAfee Associates took off. By the end of the 1980s, the company was making $5 million a year, and some of the biggest companies in the world were using his antivirus platform.
Source: Digital Trends
McAfee quickly became even more successful, largely because of a computer virus called Michelangelo that hit the scene in 1992. McAfee called it one of the worst viruses to date, estimating it would infect as many as 5 million computers. At the time, computer antivirus platforms weren’t a product most people bought. Thanks to Michelangelo, there was a growing fever to protect computers from the virus.
Source: Motherboard
Though only about tens of thousands of computers were infected, Michelangelo propelled McAfee to go public, and it turned into a multimillion-dollar business.
In 1994, McAfee set his sights for greener pastures and resigned from McAfee. Two years later he sold his shares, which gave him about $100 million.
Following his resignation, McAfee kept a relatively low profile. He would give young startups advice, lecture at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and also work on projects of his own. He’s worked on two social-network projects called PowWow and Tribal Voice, although neither hit the mainstream.
Source: MIT Technology Review
In 2008, however, the economic collapse caught up to him. One report said that his fortune had shrunk from $100 million to as little as $4 million.
Source: The New York Times
But things in Belize got hairy. He became convinced that he was being watched all the time, according to Wired.
Source: Wired
In Belize he frequented a saloon known as Lover’s Bar. He would reportedly go there everyday and watch the people go in and out. He slowly withdrew from everything else. He became obsessed watching the people in this poor part of town. After six months he wrote that he no longer had any connection to society.
“My fragile connection with the world of polite society has, without a doubt, been severed,” he wrote. “My attire would rank me among the worst-dressed Tijuana panhandlers. My hygiene is no better. Yesterday, for the first time, I urinated in public, in broad daylight.”
Source: Wired
In 2012, he was considered a "person of interest" when his neighbor Gregory Faull was shot to death, according to Reuters. McAfee fled after being questioned by the Belize government.
Source: Reuters
McAfee was arrested in Guatemala. This could have reportedly been because of Vice, which flew down two reporters to interview him. By mistake, Vice posted pictures of McAfee that still had GPS coordinates attached to them. Shortly after these events, Guatemalan police caught up with McAfee, arresting him on charges of illegal entry to the country. While detained, McAfee suffered a series of heart-related health issues. Ultimately, he was expelled from Guatemala and sent back to the US.
Source: Gawker
Following this, a media frenzy ensued. Everyone wanted to know who he was, where he was going, and if he was crazy.
McAfee didn't make things any easier for himself. In 2013, he uploaded a bizarre video entitled "How To Uninstall McAfee Antivirus." It showed him surrounded by scantily clad women while trying to uninstall the software he invented, which he denounced after leaving the company. The video also showed guns and allusions to drugs and drug use, although it was undoubtedly meant to be some sort of parody.
Source: YouTube
Ever since, McAfee has kept a sporadic public persona. He drove to Portland, Oregon, in 2013, where he reportedly still lives. He now sometimes blogs about security, privacy, and freedom.
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