MIT student visualizing malware and viruses
Cyber threats like NetSky, Mydoom and Parite are the bane of IT departments around the globe, but artist Alex Dragulescu has found subtle beauty deep within the dangerous computer code that can bring down networks and bombard e-mail inboxes with murderous spam. Dragulescu has peeled back the code behind the world’s worst tech bugs and rendered stunning images from it. The Romanian-born MIT researcher and artist was commissioned to do fashion the artwork by MessageLabs, a computer security company that sought to put a face — or at least a shape — on computer viruses.
Dragulescu found interesting, recurring patterns. “These types of threats are very smart. Very intelligent in design. Digital organisms, really, that adapt themselves and replicate. We wanted to capture some of that complexity and uniqueness.” The process of creating the art was like none other. MessageLabs carefully sent Dragulescu the once-harmful files after modifying them so his computers would not contract the viruses. Dragulescu looked for the frequency of certain occurrences in a virus, such as particular network sockets that it was designed to compromise. He fed the resulting data into a program he created with an algorithm to grow the viruses and Trojans visually. Dragulescu’s next project will be creating abstract portraits of people based on the contents of their blogs and the types of online communities they inhabit.
Source: AP, Wired
first! :p looks cool
@1 - jer-z - njoy yr ban
I like the pix, would like to have some in HR and HQ so I could print a few out. Anyone? thx
ksawery11 /// gmail d0t com
You know, this site is so WEIRD! First you have like a torrent of posts coming in at once, like, I wake up in the morning and there are like 10 new posts. Then throughout some days, you can have NO posts at all. I have experienced up to 8 or 10 hours without anything being posted here on RLSlog. I therefore suggest you could allocate certain times certain editors post. F.ex “Mr.X and ReeGed between 10 and 14″, “Christian and Lazarus between 14 and 18″ etc. This way, we´d have a steady flow of posts and wouldn´t have to sift though 3-4 pages of old posts every morning. Then you´d also know when your favorite editor posts something you might be interested in..
I don´t care, just making my life easier…:D
n0c: or you could allocate different time to read our site. geez.
HALF OF THE PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR BILL GATES AT THE MICROSOFT COMPANY ARE ROMANIANS.. ROMANIA IS A COUNTRY FILLED WITH COMPUTER HACKERS.. I’M PROUD TO BE ROMANIAN, EVEN IF I LIVE IN IRELAND! bravo voua baieti, tineti-o tot asa! (good job guys, keep up the good work!)
cool link
@2 why would 1 get banned?!?
He said it was cool, so………..
Anyway, that is cool. Not sure how he correlated bad code or any code for that matter into the images but cool all the same.
shut up loverboy, half? where do you even get your figures from.
The program itself is pretty cool, must’ve taken him a long time allocating each code with a picture.
Terrible waste of bits and bytes. He at least accuratly describes it as digital art, as the usefulness of this pictures is undoubtfully zero.
If you wanna visualize malware, you visualize the distribution patterns and how they spread among network nodes/computers/accounts.
I did some work on this (which can’t be published unfortunately), so I might be biased because I feel like my results are more useful if you wanna do more with this than just hang it as a picture on a wall, but whatever gives the MIT some headlines I guess.
traisca romania ca avem numa’ genii pe acilea
the scary fact that someone or something out there does the same visual pattern presentations to our non-virtual to us world. Call it GOD, world leading Romanian hackers or Superman… well its there… I’m bit programmer myself and visual presentation of any kind can help understanding already complex viruses to some of us…
Yeah I kno, Yuto. I did the same kind of work too!
Cool post. Nice art work. The artist’s website is http://www.sq.ro/
and about Romania,,, majority of MS workers are Jews, Pakistani and Indus simply because MS technologies are popular in Israel,Pakistan and India while Europe goes other way around.
Most of important hackers in scene are German, Poles and Scandinavian.
The only two things Romania plays an important role are teh hoax about vampires and few foods.
that’s total bull. It’s a code that installs itself on computers. IT HAS NO PHYSICAL SHAPE, SO HOW THE HELL DID THEY COME UP WITH THAT MONSTER LOOKING BLOB???! ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS!
Romanians are smart ppl.
cool idea
signed @15
mdma, IF YOU’RE A PROGRAMMER, THAT MEANS YOU’RE A SMART MEN.. BUT ON THE OTHER SIDE, YOU DON’T KNOW A THING ABOUT ROMANIA! YOU DON’T HAVE A CLUE ABOUT WHAT ROMANIANS PEOPLE HAVE DONE FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD DURING THE YEARS.. FOR YOU, AND FOR EVERYBODY ELSE WHOSE INTERESTED, I HAVE A SMALL VIDEO POSTED ON YouTube ABOUT ROMANIA.. JUST FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW. enjoy “mdma” :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCf8NWJ8kzA
I think the images got a scary resemblance to the Flying Spaghetti Monster ^^
@19 loverboy: Well at least we know Romanians ain’t smart enough to figure out how to turn of capslock.
@14: you are right about the groups, thou they shift from hacking to professional itsec services, so we might see new groups emerging.
If I’d have to give a ranking for the time being (quality-based, not quantity):
#1 Germany (e.g. THC, FX of Phenoelit, team teso, etc.)
#2 Scandinavia (e.g. kokanin)
#3 Netherlands (e.g. Netric)
#4 Poland
#5 US
#6 Israel
#7 China
#8 Turkey (e.g. noir)
…
F*** Romania, give us back Transilvania
nice joke “uraloser”..
What about telling us more about your own country?
Where are you from anyway?
By the way, the word “of” spells with two “f”, sow the right word is “OFF”.
If you live in an english speaking country, the you should already know that by now.
I’m happy to see that at least some people (like “uraloser”) are smart enough to make fun of other people, but they can’t even spell the words right.
Keep up the good work “uraloser”!
NUMA NUMA DRAGOSTEA DIN TEI
astia habar nu au ce in tara noastra..
poate sa zica fiecare ce vrea, dar eu sunt sigur ca romanii sunt cei mai buni in materie de calculatoare si internet!
ca sa nu mai vorbim de filme piratate si muzica..
romanu e tot ROMAN, oriunde ar fi!
loverboy, CLUJ, stabilit in Irlanda
@loverboy
Please shut up and stop making a fool of yourself and my country. And learn proper english.
awesome this guy made some pictures and called them viruses and malware. whoopdy-freakin-doo.
Very interesting, I wonder if he`ll ever release any software to ‘draw’ basically any .exe file we want. It would probably be pretty awesome to see graphical representations of random executables - I`m curious how ugly explorer.exe really is.
@skxc,
Well said. Typical Romanian pride posts will probably follow, drowning any kind of discussion about this subject in their shallow uselessness.
@loverboy,
Ar fi o idee sa inveti engleza daca deja esti stabilit in Irlanda. Oricum, de ce ai parasit aceasta minunata tara, plina cu oameni destepti, frumosi si educati? Daca esti atat de mandru, stai aici si nu-ti trada tara iubita.
You silly boys 8-| Stop arguing doar suntem frati nu?
Iote pula …aveam si eu ceva de zis :))
de fiecare data cand se pomeneste ceva ce a facut un roman sare toata lumea ce tara faina si ce destepti suntem si deja o inceput sa ma dispere faptu ca numa niste prosti care se plictisesc ne lauda si nu lasa faptele sa vorbeasca de la sine,
mai lasati balta faptu ca este un chinez sau un olandez care nu stie ce o facut romania pt lume si vedetiva de viata voastra pt ca totdeauna este cate un fraer care nu stie de romania.
si cine ii mai prost ala ca vorbeste fara sa gandeasca sau voi ca va coborati la nivelu lor si le raspundeti?
What’s up with all the Klingon talk?
Hurray ROMANIA !!! BEST OF ALL!!!
Good job Dragulescu!
Bravo!
As someone said on the Wired page, what’s so remarkable about these pictures? Every music player on the PC does more or less the same thing. The reason why people are fascinated by this is that they inaccurately ’see the monster in the picture’, that it is somehow a visual representation of maliciousness. but every executable can be portrayed in the same manner. And any large randomly genereated number series can be portrayed visually in a similar manner. It is all in the eye and mind of the beholder.
“I’M PROUD TO BE ROMANIAN”
c’mon Im gonna be sick of you… you just stole our country (Hungary)and you were always on a “good” side (in I.WW or II WW.)if i were you i would’t be so proud.
What people will call art never fails to amaze me. Some folks just have too much time on their hands and the rest have too much money - and between them they haven’t got a lick of sense.
off:@36 Dude ,moriam,just chill.Why are so angry?We didn’t steal ur country,and i really do not agree with this hate between romanians and hungarians.I’m not saying that i’m proud..why should i ? The program belongs to that guy
on: pretty cool programming
Hey nameisnotrequiredlol, stop that! Every time I hear that, my feet start shaking. Teh Numa Numa dance is so addictive!
@14 mdma They are not “indus” u dimwit, the ppl aof India are Indians. Hinduism is the major religion of India. Don’t mix up u ignorant punk.
P3e A5s: I also like Romanian women. Every 9 out of ten of them are pure burrrning HOTT stuff! Can’t get enough of them…
well most Romanians here are thieves and scam artists,the
romanians are the most skilled pickpockets,,wow what a legacy!!
if romanians were that smart why do they live in a broken down piece of chit country??filled with dirty gypsies.
and i guess if you are stupid enough to live under a dictatorship for many many years “chauchesko”i guess ignorance are bliss.on subject pretty cool ideea,but anyone with skill could have found that out.
what do all old news on this site have in common?
@ dragos Exactly. The Winamp AVS plugs are more artistiacally creative IMO.
@41, Waitaminit, I’ve found out what’s common: There will always be at least 1 moron like u commenting in that way oblivious to the fact that this site is primarily a scene news site only and the staff members don’t intend to make it a competitor of Google news or Reuters. So it doesn’t matter if they don’t post breaking news in the Off-Topic sexion.
I am sure all the post containing the word ROMANIAN are all from the same guy
You are very wrong “wham”.
I was the first one to post some words about ROMANIA this morning at 11:28.
I was convinced I will get some replies from a few romanians, because rlslog.net is a very popular website in Romania.
Man, just read some oldschool cyberpunk. Only the descriptions of the virtual world’s viruses is far better then this ugly rendered stuff.
Romania ? what? how did we get on that. anyways.
iam sorry but i am usually down with the Tech postings but this is lame, you can make this with those music software programs or any other free programs out there……i mean i can just play a song in winamp hit screen shot and call it a virus? uhh
All the algorithm does is change the color on the models. The models are already pre-rendered, so this stuff looking like organic virii is no coincidence. Check it on wired.com yourself. I call bullsh&t.
netsky or skynet?
who, what or where is romania? o_0
The posts here looks a lot like the response to “The Trap (Klopka)” except that Romanians don’t hate each other whereas Yugoslavs do. Anyways, the images are nice and all but kind of look like a combination of things that fall off of trees and biological viruses… Its nice, but not stunning…
That’s one sexy virus
yea right
my fave tracker is romanian…
..thy hv got some pretty good bandwidth (and some gorgeous babes)..poor jealous americans…
romania = rome ???
@GIggle & geqgzq do you live in a cartboard box? such ignorant ppl :)) throw your computer out the window, get an atlas or encyclopedia (in fact, get a life!)
@MichaelDouglas’s Neck: =)) well said! lol
(and yes, i’m also Romanian)
Check this out - get paid to use this forum http://onemillioninayear.com
Talk about useless $hit…
This is the guy’s website, http://www.sq.ro/
He has different albums on computing, the first is the one talked about in this article.
Good job Dragulescu
Jackie Gleason needs work!! Email my agent immediately!! I do donkey shows!
Wow, they’re all so cool. Good artwork.
it does look like more of a human virus
The main thing that I get out of the pictures is some idea of how something is made up, and yes visual representation of an idea can help with the assimilation of such.
The next comment that I would make is that while the pictures are meant to be a representation of the virus/malware. What would really make them interesting is to see the way they interact with the code itself as the background.
This way we could actually see how it is working to give a greater understanding of the complexity. (as mentioned with the .exe request earlier)
Romanian people. That video on You tube is cool, and while I can see that your country is cool unfortunately there are some people (as always) that bring the rep down. Keep up the good work.
As for it not being art. Could you do better? If so, DO IT. If not, what do you have to say? Yeah I thought as much. Live your life the way it should and dont bring others down. Think of the time spent, alone.
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That’s not a virus in that picture, it’s a closeup from a ganja bud!
I’m just tired of people talking about viruses I created. =p
to 39
i love you too
@14:59 morian,
Taci’n pizda mati de bozgor imputzit!!
as matt and trey said, romania is the ****hole of the universe. but every universe needs its ****hole. and i’m not proud to leave in it. but ***k it. good job, virus painteur. though, i bet most of us are more into chick nudes.
gasit portofel, ofer recompensa.
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