Infect yourself with multiple viruses to increase your net worth — it seems to work with laptops

Anyone interested in buying a decade-old netbook should be able to easily find one on eBay for less than US$100, but there are always exceptions. Today, we are talking about an exception that was recently sold for almost US$1.4 million (as incredible as it may seem, someone actually paid that sum after placing the winning bid). The secret ingredient? No less than six pieces of code that have caused financial damages in excess of US$95 billion over the last few years.

According to the official page dedicated to this unique laptop, the buyer ended up with the following pieces of hardware and software: "Airgapped Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook (2008), Windows XP SP3, 6 pieces of malware, power cord, restart script, malware."

The infamous six viruses mentioned above are the following: 

• ILOVEYOU (spread via email and file sharing, US$5.5 billion damages in the first week, US$15 billion total)
• MyDoom (email virus potentially coming from Russia, US$38 billion in damages)
• SoBig (viral email spam worm/trojan, US$37 billion total damage)
• WannaCry (ransomware crypto worm that affected over 200,000 computers worldwide and caused total damages of almost US$4 billion)
• DarkTequila (malware targeted at Latin America that stole bank credentials and corporate data and caused millions in damages)
• BlackEnergy (used in a cyber attack that caused a large-scale blackout in Ukraine back in December 2015)

The winning bid for the aforementioned netbook hit an impressive US$1,345,000, up from the US$1 million it managed to hit the previous day. If you have any interesting memories regarding your personal experiences with viruses, trojans, and other security hazards, feel free to share them with the rest of us in the comments section.