Malware Museum Preserves Old Computer Viruses As Art

This collection allows virtual visitors to safely experience malicious programs of the past

Featured on psfk.com

When the telltale signs of a computer virus invading your device appear on-screen, waves of panic might set in. But at the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based non-profit digital library, the Malware Museum allows visitors to experience the viruses of decades past in complete safety.

The Internet Archive, which has preserved 484 billion web pages, is able to simulate old computer systems to allow the curious to explore malicious programs from the 1980s and 1990s. To do so, the virtual library uses the same feature that allows it to host classic computer games that visitors can play without downloading any extra software.

The Malware Museum launched in February, featuring viruses that were designed to attack devices equipped with MS-DOS—an operating system designed for personal computers. These viruses were often programmed to overwrite files or format hard drives, and they could be programmed to attack at random.

The ‘Casino’ virus, for example, would copy a computer’s files and then make those files inaccessible, forcing their owner to win a game of blackjack to obtain access to the files. It’s one of the viruses featured in the Malware Museum.

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