From Popular Mechanics
Showing the transformative nature of the artistic process, a 10-year-old laptop infected with six of the most malicious computer viruses in the world has been sold at auction for $1.345 million.
Titled “The Persistence of Chaos,” online artist Guo O Dong went to great lengths to create the project. Commissioned with over $10,000 by a cybersecurity firm Deep Instinct, Guo’s computer is infected with infamous viruses like WannaCry, which paralyzed hospitals in England by leaving MRI scanners and blood-storage refrigerators inoperable, and ILOVEYOU, which ended up wrecking international havoc and caused over $15 billion worth in damage.
The biggest challenge in the project was keeping the laptop purely screwed. To do that, Guo had to keep the 2008 Samsung Blue Netbook safely firewalled from all other computers. Like a piece of radioactive material, it had to be quarantined in a solitary housing unit in New York.
Engineers were brought in to install the six viruses, which also include BlackEnergy, MyDoom, SoBig, and the recent DarkTequila. Several of these viruses are ancient, having stormed through the Internet in the early 2000s, but DarkTequila hit Mexico in 2018. Taken together, it’s estimated that the viruses caused $95 billion in damages worldwide.
“The piece emphasizes that [the] Internet and IRL are the same place,” Guo tells artnet News. “Placing these pieces of malware-which we ordinarily think of as remote processes happening somewhere on [a] network, but surely not to us-into this one crappy old laptop concretizes them.”
The piece has drawn significant attention, which in turn led to a significant bid. That surprised Guo, but as he tells artnet, it also follows a logic.
“Depending on how you want to look at it, this piece could be considered an exhibit of historical weaponry,” he says. “These pieces of malware were specifically chosen in many cases for the monetary loss that they caused. What does it mean that someone wants to pay so much to acquire this object?”
For anyone worried that the computer has been sold to a criminal mastermind, the sale came with a disclaimer:
The sale of malware for operational purposes is illegal in the United States. As a buyer you recognize that this work represents a potential security hazard. By submitting a bid you agree and acknowledge that you’re purchasing this work as a piece of art or for academic reasons, and have no intention of disseminating any malware. Upon the conclusion of this auction and before the artwork is shipped, the computer’s Internet capabilities and available ports will be functionally disabled.
Guo will receive the money, but he tells artnet he’s torn between two options: keeping it or burning it. Everyone who ever lost anything from one of the six viruses might be more inclined to see the latter.
Source: artnet
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