"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." - Stephen Hawking

What is VirusZoo?

VirusZoo is fun and safe way to play with different malware and viruses on a shared virtual machine.

Think of it like a virus aquarium in the cloud!

What's the point?

There is no point to this project either, just a for fun :)

There is no target audience for this project, it's for whoever find it interesting or useful.

Is this safe?

Absolutely. No viruses or malware are present on this web server. As a precaution, a daily antivirus scan is performed on the web server.

The virtual machine is not connected to the internet. The host machine (Mac OS X with firewall) is connected, but the VM software (VMWare Fusion) has it's networking disabled.

Where did you get the idea?

Here's a comic from XKCD that got me thinking about the idea of VirusZoo.
(click to see a see a bigger version from the original site)



(also called a virus zoo or zoo virus)

How does it work?

A virtual machine under VMWare is running on a different machine from the web server. Once a virus is triggered through VirusZoo, the file is executed on the virtual machine.

The virtual machine is wiped clean to a stable state every night, or every time it crashed or become unresponsive due to virus activity.

Setup

•Mac Mini running Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) (host OS)
•VMWare Fusion, running a Windows XP virtual machine (client OS)
•Hosted on Slicehost

•Over 66,000 viruses to play with in the database! Alot of the don't run properly, but we are in the middle of cleaning up the malfunctioning viruses.

Still in beta?

Were are still adding some features, listening to your feedback and fixing some bugs.
Your feedback is important!
This is just the first phase of the project. A lot more features are planned!

About Skyriser Media

Skyriser Media is an independent development studio based in Montreal, Canada.
We are dedicated to creating custom video games, applications, and web sites.

More sites from Skyriser Media

Skyriser Media - Montreal Web/iPhone development.
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Games Montreal - Montreal video game industry news and jobs.
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QR Helper - (coming soon)