That is what some the world’s largest banks of malware appear like stacked as arduous drives

Malware analysis group vx-underground, which says it has the most important assortment of malware supply code, mentioned in a put up on X that its archive of information quantities to about 30 terabytes.

A reply by Bernardo Quintero, founding father of VirusTotal, a web-based service that scans recordsdata for malware throughout a number of antivirus engines without delay, mentioned his service has about 31 petabytes of malware samples that customers have contributed thus far. (A petabyte is ~1,000-times bigger than a terabyte.)

In each circumstances, that’s numerous knowledge. For context, cybersecurity corporations, AI researchers, and risk intelligence corporations deal with repositories like these as essential for coaching detection fashions and understanding how assaults evolve. However this had us questioning: What would these huge datasets really appear like stacked as arduous drives one on high of the opposite and side-by-side? And the way would they examine to, say, the Eiffel Tower?

Somebody in our newsroom requested an AI chatbot this query, and it obtained it extremely improper.

As a substitute, we did some tough back-of-a-napkin math to determine how tall these knowledge banks can be. Since vx-underground and VirusTotal each have “about” that a lot knowledge every, “about” is sweet sufficient for us on this case. 

Let’s say we’re utilizing 1 terabyte capability inside arduous drives, since these are typically designed to be the identical bodily dimension to suit inside any pc. These standardized 3.5-inch inside arduous drives are 1 inch in peak, which for the sake of stacking one on high of the opposite is admittedly what we wish to know right here.

We’re additionally assuming that the arduous drives we’re utilizing on this instance are precisely 1 terabyte, as a result of in actuality the overall usable file capability of a tough drive is mostly considerably much less. 

Utilizing this on-line conversion device, it seems like vx-underground’s 30 terabytes of malware knowledge may fill 30 arduous drives stacked on high of each other, reaching 30 inches, or about 2.5 ft tall.

For reference, this reporter is 6 ft tall. (See visible beneath, and sure, horrible opsec, I do know.)

With that very same logic, VirusTotal’s 31 petabytes of submitted knowledge would fill 31,744 arduous drives, which stacked on high of one other would attain about 2,645 ft.

The world’s tallest constructing, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is barely taller at 2,722 ft.

The Eiffel Tower is 1,083 ft tall. By that logic, VirusTotal has about two-and-a-half Eiffel Towers’ value of information.