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

Malware analysis group vx-underground, which says it has the biggest assortment of malware supply code, stated in a post 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 directly, stated his service has about 31 petabytes of malware samples that customers have contributed to this point. (A petabyte is ~1,000-times bigger than a terabyte.)

In each instances, that’s loads of knowledge. For context, cybersecurity firms, AI researchers, and risk intelligence corporations deal with repositories like these as important for coaching detection fashions and understanding how assaults evolve. However this had us questioning: What would these monumental datasets truly seem 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 received it extremely fallacious.

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

Let’s say we’re utilizing 1 terabyte capability inner arduous drives, since these are usually designed to be the identical bodily dimension to suit inside any laptop. These standardized 3.5-inch inner arduous drives are 1 inch in height, 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 entire usable file capability of a tough drive is mostly considerably much less. 

Utilizing this online conversion tool, it appears like vx-underground’s 30 terabytes of malware knowledge might fill 30 arduous drives stacked on high of each other, reaching 30 inches, or about 2.5 toes tall.

For reference, this reporter is 6 toes 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 toes.

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

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