malware_Q-WALKER.COM.
Last Friday, the Internet Archive officially opened the Malware Museum. Compiled by cybersecurity expert and curator Mikko Hypponen, the online museum contains malware programs from the 1980s and 1990s that home computer users would encounter when their desktops had been infected by a virus. Thanks to a DOS emulator, contemporary net users can now safely experience computer virus infections from over 20 years ago sans the originally debilitating effects.
Still from Casino’s Jackpot game. Credit: Malware Museum/Guardian
In an interview with the BBC, Hypponen stated that his curatorial thematic was to focus only on the “interesting viruses”. Many of these viruses were the work of “happy hackers” who would create animations or messages. A particularly inventive virus, Casino, would overwrite a computer’s file system, but would take a copy of the files and then give users the opportunity to win the files back in a game of Jackpot.
malware_MARS-G.COM.
So far, the site has been seen over 100,000 visits in the four days since its launch. In the same interview with the BBC, Hypponen initially felt surprise by the mass nostalgia, but reasons that since most of today’s malware comes from organized crime groups and intelligence agencies, it appears there’s a yearning for those “old school happy hackers who used to write viruses for fun [but] are [now] nowhere to be seen.”
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