Script Kiddies

A few handy tips to stay safe online: Never give your password out to strangers, pick passwords that are difficult to guess, and avoid having the same password for lots of different accounts. Otherwise, you might end up with one of these mischievous fiends, rummaging around in your precious files: a virus!

A virus does make for a pretty cool skin though - at least when reimagined in Minecrafter form by artist Henkkuainen.

“I think I got the idea for the skins while doing stuff with the firewall and control panel on my computer,” says Henkkuainen, who captured the destructive and devious nature of the virus in this stealthy skull-faced skin.

“The armour is meant to look sneaky with a little cape in the back, because it's trying to sneak in the computer without being noticed,” explains Henkkuainen. “There are also some corrupted red ‘files’ with green ‘files’ on the back of the head.”

To combat this villain, Henkkuainen also made two other skins: an antivirus and a firewall - both handy things to have on your computer. An antivirus program will scan your computer for unwanted guests and eliminate them, while a firewall helps to stop them infiltrate your device in the first place by monitoring and controlling the incoming and outgoing network traffic.

“The antivirus skin has a green face and greenish armour representing ‘safe’ system status,” says Henkkuainen. “It also looks like a friendly robot, but I think that's just how I see it.” Meanwhile, Henkkuainen takes things a bit more literally with the firewall, giving the skin a brick face - a nod to the image of the firewall that Windows uses in its own Control panel. “The armour is meant to look strong, because a firewall stops suspicious files trying to get in the computer.”

I particularly like the use of the armour layer to project floating files out from the skin’s surface. Supercool stuff - and a timely reminder to always keep up your guard online! It’s wild out there!

(Btw, the background for the header image is a redstone computer, made by Bubba FC.)