$1.3M laptop turns malware into art

What qualifies as art depends on who you’re talking to. For internet artist Guo O Dong, art can be a laptop that’s infected with six different types of malware. And at least one other person though this nightmare computer was a masterpiece worth $1.3 million.

According to Gizmodo:

“The artist explained he wanted to create a physical representation of the worst cyber threats. ‘We have this fantasy that things that happen in computers can’t actually affect us, but this is absurd,’ Guo told the Verge. ‘Weaponized viruses that affect power grids or public infrastructure can cause direct harm.’”

In order to buy the laptop — and old Samsung machine infected with BlackEnergy, DarkTequila, ILOVEYOU, MyDoom, SoBig, and WannaCry — the anonymous buyer had to promise to only use the laptop for artistic or academic purposes. 


Learn more about this questionable piece of tech art at Gizmodo.

Elderly person loses $136K in tech-support scam

IT's no secret that older people are not always tech savvy. Recently, the FBI busted a group of scammers who cumulatively tricked the elderly out of more than a million dollars. And to make it even worse, they were posing as tech support professionals, giving IT pros a bad name. What a bunch of jerks! 

According to Bleeping Computer:

“Most of the victims paid amounts between $225 and $799, for fake multi-year service plans. To seal the deal, the tech support scams sometimes said that the attacks were coming from Russian hackers. One of the victims in the complaint was scammed for over $136,600 through dozens of calls from the tech support scammers. The story was that her computers had ‘network system security’ and ‘networking hardware’ problems.”

To create the $136,600 sum, the scammers would call her every few weeks. In total, she wrote them 18 checks. That works out to about $7600 per check.

Learn more about this tech-support scam at Bleeping Computer.