Finnish cybersecurity firm F-secure is all about explaining how the dark web works, classifying malware and providing technical validation for how cybercrime, cyber-espionage and other cyber-nastiness happens.

The firm’s chief research officer Mikko Hyppönen spoke at the recent InfoSec conference in London to explain how his company works to profile the connected cybercriminal today.

In January we started creating an archive of malware at the International Internet Archive [that’s the body that keeps a record of the whole Internet],” said Hyppönen. “This ‘malware museum’ means we are able to run old malware binaries and run them. This is worth thinking about — because everything old becomes new again,” he added.

Hyppönen’s old-becomes-new comment was made in the context of the 27-years that have elapsed between the AIDS information Trojan in 1989 and the emergence in May 2016 of Petia… it infects your Windows system and forces a reboot that encrypts your whole system.

“There are 27 years between these Trojans, but essentially they both infect your master boot record… ok one asks for money and the other works in bitcoin today, but essentially everything old becomes new again,” added Hyppönen.