An American artist has applied an astonishing idea:developing malware capable of infecting computers according to the health situation of their geographical location. Its objective is to offer a different visualization of the health crisis linked to Covid-19.
Justin Blinder presents himself as an artist, technologist and researcher. According to the person concerned, his malware called Pandemic Pulse infects computer resources at the same rate as Covid-19 infections and deaths of its location. You should know that Justin Blinder had already presented his program at the end of 2020 (see video at the end of the article), before bringing it out with the recent emergence of the delta variant. The artist says he was motivated by a desire to offer a different visualization of the crisis by giving meaning to the production of figures on the epidemic which, it must be said, is impressive.
The malware is based on figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States. Thus, this one does not work for France or any other country. In any case, since the situation can be very different in different localities, infected computers can show a wide variation in performance decline.
“The app recontextualizes relevant epidemiological data about the pandemic and attempts to make it tangible and relevant on a personal level “, indicates Justin Blinder on his personal site.
Thus, through his computer, the Internet user becomes a spectator of a performance whose objective is to allow him to represent the health situation of his geographical location . If one is somewhat interested in the technical details, the artist explains that the malware slows down the processor of the machine according to the local infection rate. As for the brightness of the screen, it will be reduced according to the death rate of Covid patients.
“Feeding off our computers, the malware thrives on the same platform we use to track news of Covid-19 and its impacts. This time, through our devices, we can feel specific effects of its omnipresence:a certain slowness (computing) and a dimming (of the screen) “, specifies the artist.
Finally, if we can obviously consider Pandemic Pulse as malware, no one has suffered its effects by chance. Indeed, the "victims" all volunteered to participate in the experience. In other words, Justin Blinder never intended to infect computers against the will of their owners as part of a large-scale attack. In addition, the malicious program can be deactivated with a single click and the most skeptical can download the source code on the GitHub platform.
