Photos: Viruses and Trojans come to life

The art of cyber crime...

Security software firm MessageLabs, has turned a number of cyber threats into works of art using the malicious computer code which forms them.

Alex Dragulescu created the images for six cyber security threats using code detected by MessageLabs, including viruses, phishing, spam, spyware and Trojans.

This is the Ghost spyware which saves the keystrokes, screen shots and websites visited. The information gathered can then be used for criminal purposes.

Picture credit: MessageLabs

This pretty vision is Netsky - a worm that consistently poses a threat via email traffic.

Picture credit: MessageLabs

This is Phishing1, which requests victims to confirm personal information - such as addresses or bank account details - with claims it will improve security.

Picture credit: MessageLabs

This is the code for the Russian3 spam which uses images to target personal insecurities of people - such as weight or hair loss - to convince them to sign up for dubious schemes or products.

Picture credit: MessageLabs

This is the Storm virus which has formed one of the largest ever botnets with around two million computers compromised by it.

Picture credit: MessageLabs

The Trojanagentil3 is an encoded Trojan which continually alters to avoid detection by security software.

Picture credit: MessageLabs