Are you having trouble getting those big-ticket computer viruses’ attention? Have you been clicking around on really questionable and disturbing websites without your AV on, and opening every attachment that arrives in your Inbox with your fingers crossed hoping you’d be lucky enough to find a very scary pop-up asking for Bitcoin? Yes? Well you missed your chance to bypass all that hard work by purchasing a laptop pre-infested with a veritable who’s who of devastating computer viruses. Late last month an artist named Guo O Dong auctioned off a decade old laptop that he had intentionally infected with 6 of the most infamous pieces of malware for $1.345 Million dollars. He titled his piece, ‘The Persistence of Chaos’.
The all-star cast of digital diseases includes ILOVEYOU, MyDoom, SoBig, WannaCry, DarkTequila, and BlackEnergy. Altogether it is estimated that these malevolent binary based afflictions caused close to $100 billion dollars in damages. Why would someone create this? Well, it’s art, I guess. So, just make something up and no one can tell you you’re wrong. The artist says he wanted to give physical form to threats that are very abstract to most of the world. I think that’s great. It creates awareness. Would I pay $1.3 million for it? Of course not. I’d do something responsible like buy a giant Scrooge McDuck vault and swim around in whatever money I had leftover.