Computer with six of the most dangerous viruses on sale for over $1 million

Computer Viruses. They’re big causes of much frustration on the internet as the risk of being infected is perpetual. Despite the growth in internet security and anti-virus detection, it seems virus developers continue to find inventive ways of finding loopholes in the software and exploiting them much to the frustrations of users and software developers around the world. In fact, you could argue that virus development has become an art form of its own considering the remarkable skill and complexity involved to make them.   

And it’s with this idea of art in mind that internet artist Guo O Dong has created a new piece of art, titled The Persistence of Chaos which is essentially an ordinary laptop filled with six of the world’s most dangerous pieces of malware. The six viruses in the laptop (a 10.2-inch Samsung NC10-14GB) were chosen for the magnitude of economic damage they’ve caused. They include the ILOVEYOU virus, a computer bug from 2000 that often appeared as a “love letter” attached to emails; and WannaCry, a ransomware attack that shut down computers in hospitals and factories around the world in 2017, and which intelligence agencies blamed on North Korea.

Why anyone would want a device like this is beyond me. Not only would it make the laptop practically unusable but could easily put a person’s home network at risk should I be connected to it. Yes, most anti-virus programs should be able to identify these by now, but still, the risk remains.

However, if you somehow see this work of art as a significant historical artefact, then be prepared to fork out a lot of money as the artwork is currently on sale for $1.2 million in a bidding war for the prized possession.  It appears that to own this kind of thing you not only need to be absolutely crazy but ridiculously rich too.

Last Updated: May 27, 2019