Gallery: 11 Trippy Illustrations of History's Most Infamous Computer Viruses
Merijn Hos01Merijn-Hos
Nople virus by Merijn Hos depicts the Windows NT worm that spreads over local and shared network drives. When activated, the worm runs an animation that looks like a mass of fuzzy looking multi-colored strings and displays a note that's translated to: "It's time to format your disk."
Mel Nguyen02Mel-Nguyen
This illustration of Stuxnet is by Mel Nguyen. The virus, created jointly by the U.S. and Israel, destroyed Iran's nuclear centrifuges.
Saiman Chow.03Saiman-Chow
The Melissa virus, as illustrated by Saiman Chow. This virus was named after its maker's favorite stripper, hence the female motif.
Jonathan Zawada04Zawada
The Lichen virus by Jonathan Zawada depicts a sierpinski pyramid made of stones, covered in a glowing lichen which increases in frequency as the stones get smaller. The virus infects your computer's .com and .exe files and activates a month later. Whenever there's no keyboard activity for more than one minute, it produces lichen visualizations.
Clay Hickson05Hickson-1
Clay Hickson illustrated the LSD virus, which overwrites the files in your current directory and displays a rainbow animation across your screen.
Joost and Nick06Techno-V-rus
Illustrators Joost and Nick depicted the techno virus, which infects your computer and pumps out loud techno music while displaying the word TECHNO across your screen. Their version is a little more subtle.
Mike Perry07Mike-Perry
The Selectronic DOS virus embeds itself in your computer’s memory and is activated on Friday the 13th. “Countdown to Extinction” displays on your screen then you see an 8-bit grim reaper marching across it. Mike Perry imagine what this virus might look like from inside the computer.
Jay Wright08Jay-Wright
Jay Wright illustrated the Madman virus, which is a DOS virus that infects .exe files. Whenever you hit CTRL-ALT-DEL the virus displays an ASCII picture of an red-faced man.
Hort09Hort
Hort illustrated the Marburg virus, which infects .EXE and .SCR files and pops up the critical error sign.
Darius Ou Dahao10Darius
Darius Ou Dahao's version of the ILOVEYOU email virus, which broke out in 2000 and spread to more than 50 million computers.
