Image Credit: Engadget
It’s like a fossil. A terrifying fossil.
While getting infested with malware is a scary, generally unpleasant affair, there is something morbidly interesting about seeing a stranger’s computer teeming with it. Heck, I’ve watched YouTube videos of dudes deliberately downloading so many viruses that their computer completely crashes. It’s like Jackass for computers.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who finds that stuff interesting, because an old laptop crammed with high-risk malware has just been auctioned off for the mildly outrageous price tag of $1.3 million. Contemporary internet artist Guo O Dong took an old 2008 Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook laptop running Windows XP, and with assistance from digital security company Deep Instinct, loaded it with samples of some of the digital age’s most dangerous viruses. The viruses he used include ILOVEYOU, MyDoom, SoBig, WannaCry, Dark Tequila, and Black Energy, the combined financial damages of which total to a whopping $95 billion.
The laptop was sold as a sort of esoteric art piece titled “The Persistence of Chaos.” The buyer of this viral time capsule has remained anonymous, but don’t worry, they probably aren’t a supervillain. And even if they were, the laptop was completely isolated during the project’s creation, its internet connectivity has been disabled, and all of its ports have had their functions removed. No viral data can ever be harvested from the laptop, at least not without a lot of effort. It shall serve only as an eternal reminder of the cybercrimes of years past.
