Security Threats: A Viral Artform

With a large percentage of IT professionals expecting to suffer a security breach, and Windows 7 already showing signs of vulnerability to hackers, it's fair to say we're under siege by cyber criminals. But what does the enemy look like? What color is spyware? What shape and form identify varying strains of malware, worms, and Trojans? Artists Alex Dragulescu and Julian Hodgson accepted a commission from MessageLabs, now part of Symantec (NSDQ: SYMC), and set to work to find out. It turns out the look of online threats can be as beautiful as they are menacing.

Dragulescu's projects are experiments and explorations of algorithms, computational models, simulations, and information visualizations that involve data derived from databases, spam e-mails, malware, blogs, and video-game assets. Using pieces of disassembled code, memory addresses, API calls and subroutines associated with malware and adware, they analyzed the data by frequency, density, and groupings. Algorithms were then developed and the artists mapped the data to the inputs of the algorithms, which then generated virtual 3D entities.

The patterns and rhythms found in the data gave shape to the configuration of the artificial organisms, and the result was a series of images called Malwarez. In addition to malware, worms and Trojans, the artists also analyzed and created renderings of e-mail spam, phishing attacks, keyloggers, and malicious e-card attacks.