Fantastic Malmons and How to Analyze Them - Lena Yu

For centuries, Victorian naturalists made sense of the living world by observing it closely, illustrating it by hand, and giving it names. This talk turns that same patient gaze on malware. I will introduce the Malmons, aka Malware Monsters, a way of seeing malicious code as specimens with anatomy, behavior, and a place in an ecosystem. Alongside them, I will present the Lenaean Taxonomy, a Linnaeus-inspired framework that classifies malware by habitat, function, and defining trait. Cataloguing malware this way bridges art, science, literature, and cybersecurity, and makes a case for the enduring value of books. Let's discover the fantastic (Un)Natural world of Malmons together.