Rootkit Sculpture Planned Since Users Still Don’t Get It
Once again I come to you tongue-in-cheek and the real question will be how do I paint the predicted BIOS attacks? I also wonder what e-commerce professionals are going to do about that when the infrastructure they take for granted becomes a full blown digital war. I don’t know. At any rate if this faux press release seeks to explain the dangers and ramifications of rootkits yet again, if I fail, try wikipedia.
Fake Press Release (Cleveland, Ohio): Porter Addresses RootKit Painting & New Sculpture Plans
Famed Avant-garde RootKit artist Wayne Porter addresses people’s concerns of not being able to see his first rootkit art creation revealed on his blog. The new rootkit painting, with Porter posing in front, clearly shows the chaotic nature of a rootkit complete with blazing colors and malovelent reds mixed with other pyschedelic colors.
Porter says, “People simply couldn’t visualize the first rootkit painting and the number of queries hitting my inbox overwhelmed me, even ZDNET tried to clarify the matter. I decided to do this particular rootkit, while recovering, in full color to help people visualize the dangerous nature of the threat. I realize this might anger many rootkit art purists who feel that rootkits are invisible by nature and should stay that way, but I really don’t know any other way to capture the elusive and potentianally dangerous nature of the rootkit so that non-technical users and e-commerce professionals can understand its significance.”
Porter goes on to say this will be his last rootkit painting, but he is planning a 350 foot-tall sculpture around the set of tools made famous by Sony BMG as well as instant messenger crackers and other companies. “I haven’t decided on whether to use oxygen or carbon monoxide to create the sculpture, although I am leaning towards oxygen as it is much safer. Still oxygen has two common allotropes so there is still an artistic decision to be made.”
Many art critics have suggested Porter use a mercaptan in his planned rootkit sculpture (a chemical that has a sulfur like odor) to give it the distinct and unpleasant rotton egg smell that is mixed with dangerous gases so that people can be alerted to leaks.
Porter rebuffs the idea of using mercaptans. “I really want my rootkit artwork to reflect what a user would encounter in the wild and that means taking them by complete and total surprise- sort of like a digital ambush. While using a stinky smelling medium could be interpreted as a nice artistic reflection of say something that Sony BMG might have used, of the after effect of a rootkit attack I really want to capture the rootkit in its purest form. Otherwise I could just make the sculpture out of cow manure or any medium of that nature.”
Porter has not released when his sculpture will be complete but hopes to begin construction on by the end of August, 2006 if funds are provided by a grant from the ill-gotten gains fund. This fund provided by enterprising hackers using massive botnets to compromise machines across instant messenger networks has sometimes been used to fund such artwork although no documented cases exist of exactly where the money goes or any artwork funded.
Porter admits, “The fund probably doesn’t exist but the money has to go somewhere, especially given the size of some of the brands funding and using these mechanisms for profit- somebody or some entity has to be benefiting from all of this cash flow.”
