Windows laptop with 6 deadly viruses fetches record bid

In the US, a 2008-series Windows laptop, dubbed as 'The Persistence of Chaos' has fetched a whopping $1,345,000 bid. Guess what, the buyer is forbidden to connect it to the Internet or put a USB pen drive for that matter.

Why? you would ask. Well, the answer lies in the headline. It has six deadliest viruses and malware that can potentially wreak havoc to his/her home or the office computer network system. They have a notorious history of bringing down the internet in global corporate and governments services causing damage of close to $100 billion.

They are housed in a 10.2-inch Samsung NC10-14GB Netbook (Blue) running Windows XP SP3. Considering its security risks, the seller Guo O Dong says the computer is air-gapped, physically isolated from unsecured networks so that the virus and malware have no chance of spreading to other systems by any means.

Here is a brief description of six viruses and malware in the laptop:

BlackEnergy: It emerged first in 2007 as an HTTP-based toolkit that generated bots to execute distributed denial of service attacks. Again In 2010, it came back stronger as BlackEnergy 2 with capabilities beyond DDoS. BlackEnergy 2 uses sophisticated rootkit/process-injection techniques, robust encryption, and a modular architecture known as a "dropper". Again BlackEnergy 3 was used in a cyber attack causing a large-scale blackout in Ukraine in December 2015.

DarkTequila: It one of the most sophisticated and evasive banking malware. It targeted users mainly in Latin America stealing financial credentials and corporate data even while offline. DarkTequila caused millions in damages across many users.

ILOVEYOU: This virus also goes by the names Love Bug and Love Letter. It spread through email and file sharing, affecting more 500,000 systems and caused $15B in damages total, with $5.5B in damages being caused in the first week alone.

MyDoom: This malware was reportedly commissioned by Russian e-mail spammers in 2004; it is said to be one of the fastest spreading worms than Sobig and ILOVEYOU and is yet to be surpassed. As per reports, it caused around $38B in damages.

SoBig: This computer worm-cum-trojan infected millions of Internet-connected, Microsoft Windows computers in August 2003 causing close to $37 billion in damages. It circulated through emails as viral spam. This piece of malware could copy files, email itself to others, and could damage computer software/hardware.

WannaCry: This is a familiar malware, as WannaCry is still fresh in people's mind. It is extremely virulent ransomware crypto worm that also set up backdoors on systems. In 2017, the attack affected 200,000+ computers across 150 countries and caused the NHS $100M in damages with further totals accumulating close to $4B.

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