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

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

A reply by Bernardo Quintero, founding father of VirusTotal, an internet 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 thus far. (A petabyte is ~1,000-times bigger than a terabyte.)

In each instances, that’s quite a lot of knowledge. For context, cybersecurity corporations, AI researchers, and risk intelligence corporations deal with repositories like these as vital for coaching detection fashions and understanding how assaults evolve. However this had us questioning: What would these monumental datasets really seem like stacked as arduous drives one on prime of the opposite and side-by-side? And the way would they evaluate to, say, the Eiffel Tower?

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

As an alternative, 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 nice sufficient for us on this case. 

Let’s say we’re utilizing 1 terabyte capability inside arduous drives, since these are usually designed to be the identical bodily measurement to suit inside any laptop. These standardized 3.5-inch inside arduous drives are 1 inch in peak, which for the sake of stacking one on prime of the opposite is basically 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 usually considerably much less. 

Utilizing this on-line conversion device, it seems to be like vx-underground’s 30 terabytes of malware knowledge may fill 30 arduous drives stacked on prime 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 prime 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’ price of knowledge.