Storm Worm More Powerful Than Top Supercomputers

Stony Stevenson writes to mention that some security researchers are claiming that the Storm Worm has grown so massive that it could rival the world's top supercomputers in terms of raw power. "Sergeant said researchers at MessageLabs see about 2 million different computers in the botnet sending out spam on any given day, and he adds that he estimates the botnet generally is operating at about 10 percent of capacity. 'We've seen spikes where the owner is experimenting with something and those spikes are usually five to 10 times what we normally see,' he said, noting he suspects the botnet could be as large as 50 million computers. 'That means they can turn on the taps whenever they want to.'"

Comments

I don't get it

[baggins2001]

Something's seems fishy here
Okay they are watching 2 million computers a day and they think the size is 10 million. Why can't they start creating a block list so that we would all know which computers are likely to be part of the network.
If some web sites, email server, mailing lists were monitored, then you could tell these people that they are infected.
This is a typical security story. The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Instead of everyone sitting around going this is bad.
Antivirus software could also be updated for the purpose of determining whether they are part of the network.