VIRUS
Reverse Engineering Computer Malware to Understand The Origins of Life
A comparison between biological viruses and malware from the perspective of a reverse engineer and scientist.
During my undergraduate career, I had the opportunity to volunteer as a research assistant in the Pharmacology and Toxicology department, studying the adverse effects of inflammation induced by viruses in rodents.
I was enamored by virology and infectious diseases — when I decided to change my career trajectory, the infatuation never went away. I’ve tend to see myself gravitate towards malware research by reading books, reverse engineering samples of malware and reading blogs. The similarities I’ve found between the two may be a coincidence or a natural formation of bio-mimicry. Humans are a lot like computers, we have functions and underlying code that can be tampered with or exploited by things outside of our reach.
In Biology, viruses are simple-celled organisms that contain nucleic acids surrounded by a protein coat. In computers, they are an artificial life-form that corrupts a system and destroys data.
Some scientists even believe they are the key to the origin of life, but are viruses even alive? An accurate depiction of what it…
