The Malware Data Tsunami

Malware research group vx-underground, which claims to have the largest collection of malware source code, recently revealed that its archive of data amounts to about 30 terabytes.

A reply by Bernardo Quintero, founder of VirusTotal, an online service that scans files for malware across multiple antivirus engines at once, said his service has about 31 petabytes of malware samples contributed by users.

This enormous data is critical for training detection models and understanding how attacks evolve.

Stacking the Data

We wanted to know what these massive datasets would look like stacked as hard drives one on top of the other and side by side. So, we did some rough back-of-a-napkin math.

Assuming 1 terabyte capacity internal hard drives, which are generally designed to be the same physical size to fit inside any computer, we calculated that vx-underground's 30 terabytes of malware data could fill 30 hard drives stacked on top of one another, reaching 30 inches, or about 2.5 feet tall.

Comparing the Data to the Eiffel Tower

For reference, this reporter is 6 feet tall.

Using the same logic, VirusTotal's 31 petabytes of submitted data would fill 31,744 hard drives, which stacked on top of one another would reach about 2,645 feet.

The world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is slightly taller at 2,722 feet.

By that logic, VirusTotal has about two and a half Eiffel Towers' worth of data.

The Eiffel Tower is 1,083 feet tall. VirusTotal's data bank would be more than two and a half times its height.

The Verdict

So, which one is actually taller? VirusTotal's data bank, of course.