This is what some the world’s largest banks of malware look like stacked as hard drives

3 hours ago 3

Malware probe radical vx-underground, which says it has the largest postulation of malware root code, said in a station connected X that its archive of information amounts to astir 30 terabytes.

A reply by Bernardo Quintero, laminitis of VirusTotal, an online work that scans files for malware crossed aggregate antivirus engines astatine once, said his work has astir 31 petabytes of malware samples that users person contributed to date. (A petabyte is ~1,000-times larger than a terabyte.)

In some cases, that’s a batch of data. For context, cybersecurity companies, AI researchers, and menace quality firms dainty repositories similar these arsenic captious for grooming detection models and knowing however attacks evolve. But this had america wondering: What would these tremendous datasets actually look similar stacked arsenic hard drives 1 connected apical of the different and side-by-side? And however would they comparison to, say, the Eiffel Tower?

Someone successful our newsroom asked an AI chatbot this question, and it got it incredibly wrong.

Instead, we did immoderate unsmooth back-of-a-napkin mathematics to fig retired however gangly these information banks would be. Since vx-underground and VirusTotal some person “about” that overmuch information each, “about” is bully capable for america successful this case.

Let’s accidental we’re utilizing 1 terabyte capableness interior hard drives, since these are mostly designed to beryllium the aforesaid carnal size to acceptable wrong immoderate computer. These standardized 3.5-inch interior hard drives are 1 inch successful height, which for the involvement of stacking 1 connected apical of the different is truly what we privation to cognize here.

We’re besides assuming that the hard drives we’re utilizing successful this illustration are exactly 1 terabyte, due to the fact that successful world the full usable record capableness of a hard thrust is mostly somewhat less.

Using this online conversion tool, it looks similar vx-underground’s 30 terabytes of malware information could capable 30 hard drives stacked connected apical of 1 another, reaching 30 inches, oregon astir 2.5 feet tall.

For reference, this newsman is 6 feet tall. (See ocular below, and yes, unspeakable opsec, I know.)

With that aforesaid logic, VirusTotal’s 31 petabytes of submitted information would capable 31,744 hard drives, which stacked connected apical of different would scope astir 2,645 feet.

The world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa successful Dubai, is somewhat taller astatine 2,722 feet.

The Eiffel Tower is 1,083 feet tall. By that logic, VirusTotal has astir two-and-a-half Eiffel Towers’ worthy of data.