That is what a few of the world’s largest banks of malware appear to be stacked as arduous 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 information for malware throughout a number of antivirus engines directly, stated his service has about 31 petabytes of malware samples that customers have contributed so far. (A petabyte is ~1,000x bigger than a terabyte.)

In each instances, that’s a variety of knowledge. For context, cybersecurity corporations, AI researchers, and risk intelligence companies 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 really appear to be stacked as arduous drives one on prime of the opposite and aspect by aspect? And the way would they evaluate to, say, the Eiffel Tower?

Somebody in our newsroom requested an AI chatbot this query, and it bought it extremely mistaken.

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 nice 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 measurement to suit inside any laptop. These standardized 3.5-inch inside arduous drives are 1 inch in height, which for the sake of stacking one on prime 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 whole usable file capability of a tough drive is mostly considerably much less. 

Utilizing this online conversion tool, it seems like vx-underground’s 30 terabytes of malware knowledge might fill 30 arduous drives stacked on prime 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 prime of each 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.