Romanian artist Alex Dragulescu uses code to create art from some of the world's most dangerous cyberthreats.
James Martin
James Martin is the Managing Editor of Photography at CNET.
His photos capture technology's impact on society - from the widening wealth gap in San Francisco, to the European refugee crisis and Rwanda's efforts to improve health care.
From the technology pioneers of Google and Facebook, photographing Apple's Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai, to the most groundbreaking launches at Apple and NASA, his is a dream job for any documentary photography and journalist with a love for technology.
Exhibited widely, syndicated and reprinted thousands of times over the years, James follows the people and places behind the technology changing our world, bringing their stories and ideas to life.
The RSA Conference being held in San Francisco, Calif., this week is bringing together information security professionals to discuss the most dangerous cyberthreats looming beneath our fingertips. At the Press Club on Wednesday evening, artist Alex Dragulescu debuted his new artwork depicting computational representations of code which, while dangerous, can also be beautiful.
2 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
MyDoom
Using actual code from these dangerous viruses, with help collecting them from cybersecurity firm MessageLabs, Dragulescu gives us a look at codes that have wreaked havoc around the world. In early 2004, the MyDoom e-mail worm was said to have infected 1 of every 12 e-mails worldwide.
3 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
Rogueware Spysheriff
Fake anti-spyware program Rogueware Spysheriff will slow a computer and display pop-up ads. After MessageLabs intercepted these codes and diffused them so they were rendered inoperative, Dragulescu built an application to analyze them and used their values to create 3D visualizations.
4 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
Cutwail
These 3D models are then manipulated with modeling software to best capture the unique patterns and aesthetics of the code visualizations. Installer Trojan Cutwail, also known as Pushdo and Pandex, is currently one of the world's largest botnets, controlling more than one million active bots.
5 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
PWS-Lineage
Information-gathering Trojan PWS-Lineage is a class of malware that steals passwords.
6 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
DegreesDiploma5
DegreesDiploma5 arrives in your in-box as spam, promoting university degrees.
7 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
The Parite virus
The Parite virus infects host files and drops executable malware.
8 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
BoundaryEncryption1
This non-threat image, BoundaryEncryption1, is a visual representation of 15,000 e-mails sent and received through MessageLabs Boundary Encryption service.
9 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
EmailArchive1
EmailArchive1 shows archived e-mails, which are represented by three-dimensional "voxels," where the data size of the e-mail is proportional to the volume of the voxel. The most recent e-mails are stored on the blue surface of the sphere and older e-mails are stored toward the core.
10 of 10 Alex Dragulescu
EmailContinuity1
EmailContinuity1 illustrates e-mail frequency and volume data as an arc from sender to recipient. The objects around the edge represent e-mail in-boxes, and their size represents the size of their data in an e-mail. The arcs represent internal and external e-mail communication, with the faded arcs denoting older e-mails, and the brighter arcs representing more recent messages.
