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

Massive storm worm?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Where's Paul Atredies when you need him?

Imagine...

[nuclearpenguins]

Imagine a beowulf clus.... never mind.

Does this work on Linux?

[Erikderzweite]

I was unable to find this worm in Gentoo's portage tree. When do we get our ebuilds? Yet again, it is a discrimination for all Linux people.
I'll tell you - as long as there are no worms for GNU/Linux, we won't see the masses converting to free operation system! RMS has to write a Gworm at last! If an open-source worm beats closed and proprietary Storm Worm this will be a clear indication of superiority of FLOSS!

Re:Does this work on Linux?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Here is the Linux compatible worm for you:

A simple email message: "This is a linux virus. It works on the honor principle. Please forward the attached bash script to everyone in your .mailrc and then execute it. Thanks."

Re:"Add the computers together"?

[nacturation]

Is there some kind of standardized performance metric for sending spam messages? Of course there is: Libraries of Congress per second.

Who'd have guessed that Windows can scale so well

[Anonymous Coward]

wow

Not really like a supercomputer though

[SpaFF]

While it might be more powerful than machines on the TOP500 in terms of raw number-crunching ability, it lacks any sort of high-speed interconnect for message passing. The latency issue would make for poor benchmark results in most "supercomputer" type tests (Linpack, etc.)

Re:Storm Worm - good name for sci-fi novel

[bytesex]

As long as it means operating the escape key with one of Angelinas boobies, I'm all for it !

Re:Fine the technically illiterate

[QMO]

Folding@Home is the biggest waste of time on the Internet without exception. It's worthless.

Not quite. Don't forget World of Warcraft.

Re:Can somebody explain

[lightversusdark]

a few rouge nodes

This would cause a bleu screen of death on said rouge nodes.