Storm Worm Rising

The Storm worm has been an increasing problem in the last few months, but a change in tactics may mean something big is going to happen. The article discusses a bit of back story about the worm, including the somewhat frightening numbers about the millions of spam emails carrying the worm payload. They estimate between a quarter and a million infected systems usable for spam or DDOS attacks.

Comments

How are these numbers calculated?

[IndieKid]

They estimate between a quarter and a million infected systems usable for spam or DDOS attacks. 0.25 to 1,000,000 is a pretty large range.

Seriously though, how does one go about estimating these numbers? Is it something as simple as an estimate of what proportion of infected e-mails are expected to result in an infected desktop? I doubt that would give a very accurate figure.

Re:How are these numbers calculated?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Seriously though, how does one go about estimating these numbers?

• 1. Roll 2D6
• 2. Take the number rolled, and multiply it times the number of worm messages that have arrived in your inbox.
• 3. If your computer is actually infected, square the result.
• 4. Play a game of Solitare
• 5. Add your final score to the result
• 6. Divide the result by your Boss's vigilance.
• 7. Make a saving throw against discovery, and multiply the result by 1000
• 8. Round up to the nearest 100,000
• 9. Publish
• 10. Profit!

Lower bounds are trickier as they will require you to actually care about what you're doing.

Re:How are these numbers calculated?

[Qzukk]

All fear "the swifly spiking onslaught of the Storm Worm!"

It's product placement for Swiffer dusters, able to swifly swiff up dust, viruses and worms.

Re:How are these numbers calculated?

[Fnord666]

Seriously though, how does one go about estimating these numbers?

Simple really. Just call Microsoft and ask how many systems are running their OS.

Re:How are these numbers calculated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Error in line 6 - Divide by zero

that is why

[clubhi]

That is why I always do my online banking BEFORE I browse for porn

Re:Removal Tool

[ben0207]

No fukcing way am I going anywhere near a site called Team Furry.

The goggle really might do nothing.

Re:Removal Tool

[jollyreaper]

http://www.teamfurry.com/wordpress/2007/07/19/suns hine-on-a-stormy-day/ I'm too scared to look. On a scale of goatse to tubgirl, how's it rate?

Re:"The silent majority" is uninformed.

[Mr. Flibble]

With all the past outbreaks on Windows machines, anyone who wanted to migrate has already started their migration. This won't change anything for anyone else.

Well, it is changing it for me! I got an ecard from "friend" and I downloaded the exe on my iMac, and it won't work. I could not see the card. I tried again on my Red Hat Enterprise 4 server, and even after chmod +x *AND* running as root with X windows going, the card would not open.

That is the last straw for me! I can't get cards from my "friend". I am going back to Windows where I can open cards.

Re:"The silent majority" is uninformed.

[jez9999]

That is the last straw for me! I can't get cards from my "friend". I am going back to Windows where I can open cards.
--
Try to hack my 31337 firewall! [127.0.0.1]

Yeah, you really should do; you clearly need a more secure OS than the one you're running now. I just hacked your firewall, and man have you got a lot of weird stuff on there. :-) You're lucky I'm not a black-hat.