Laptop Running Six Most Dangerous Malware up for Auction

This is news! A laptop containing six of the most dangerous of malware created till date is up for auction.

A Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook, which contains six such malware strains which together have caused damages worth $95B over the years, has been put up for auction. This laptop has in fact been isolated and airgapped so as to prevent the spread of the malware that it contains. (Well, we know that if you are an expert, you might be cynical about the effectiveness of airgapping; but technically speaking, it’s supposed to help curb the spread of malware!).

It’s illegal to sell malware for operational purposes in the U.S. The seller of the malware-packed laptop, as per reports, has devised a way to get around this issue by calling it art. This laptop, which runs on Windows XP SP3, is now called ‘The Persistence of Chaos’.

A Forbes report dated May 15, 2019, says, “The singular laptop is an air-gapped Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook (2008) running Windows XP SP3 and loaded with the malware and restart script. It also comes with a power cord, just in case the 11-year-old battery isn’t still holding a viable charge.” The report further adds, “It’s currently sitting on a white cube in a room somewhere in New York City and is being sold under the guise of art as “The Persistence of Chaos”. It’s certainly subversive and skirts the legalities of selling malware (it’s illegal to sell for operational purposes), but hey, anarchy is entertaining.”

The infected laptop is a creation of performance artist Guo O Dong in collaboration with cybersecurity company Deep Instinct. Curtis Silver, who has authored the Forbes report, has quoted Guo O Dong as telling him via email, “I created The Persistence of Chaos because I wanted to see how the world responds to and values the impact of malware.”

The six strains of malware that the laptop contains are

WannaCry – The ransomware that spread all across the world and made a devastating impact on over 200,000 computers across over 150 countries.

Mydoom – The fastest-spreading email worm till date, Mydoom was first seen in January 2004 and worked mainly by sending junk email through infected computers and at the same time appearing as a transmission error.

Sobig – First detected to be infecting computer systems in August 2003, this malware, which is a worm and a trojan, is the second fastest spreading worm as of 2018. It deactivated itself in September 2003.

BlackEnergy – The malware that was first seen in 2007 and then worked by generating bots for executing DDoS attacks that were distributed via email spam. At a later stage of evolution, it would drop an infected DLL component directly to the local application data folder.

ILOVEYOU – This malware, which spread through an email attachment ‘LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs’, was sent from an infected person to people in his contact list. Once the attachment gets opened, a script is started that would overwrite random types of files- Office files, audio files, image files, etc. Seen since May 2000.

DarkTequila – This malware, which has been active since 2013 and seen impacting systems in Latin America, spreads through spear phishing and infected USB drives. Hackers use DarkTequila to steal corporate data, bank credentials, and personal data as well.

Curtis Silver observes in his Forbes report, “On a base level the goal if we believe light grey text on a white background, is to sell this malware infused laptop under the blanket of art for academic purposes. On a deeper level, it’s a statement of social anarchy, of controlled chaos and an exposé of how fragile our machine-connected lives really are.”

This is a very relevant observation because news relating to this laptop (if it has all the malware that it claims to have), is in all respects, a worrying thing.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/this-laptop-running-some-of-the-most-dangerous-malware-ever-created-is-up-for-auction/

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