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

Fine the technically illiterate

[ComradeSnarky]

They should write a virus that uses exploits to install stuff like Folding@Home etc. If people pose a nuisance/danger to others in real life they get fined/jailed, if they pose a nuisance/danger online by letting their computers be compromised then they should face "punishment" by "fining" them part of their CPU power.

Storm Worm - good name for sci-fi novel

[pzs]

Plot idea 1: Near future. Governments completely dependent on their IT infrastructure. Organised crime in control of huge botnet able to hold government to ransom. With hilarious consequences.

Plot idea 2: Now-ish. Script kiddie unleashes attack using enormous botnet. Runs out of control. Becomes so deeply imbedded into internet that it's impossible to shut down without "rebooting" the whole infrastructure. With hilarious consequences.

Plot idea 3: Medium future. Internet and control of botnets becomes so intrinsic to society that governments have less importance than internet societies. Whole "countries" exist as virtual connections of affiliated machines. With hilarious consequences.

Any of the above would work well as a Hollywood movie given Angelina Jolie and lots of gratuitous and incorrect techno-babble.

Peter

"Add the computers together"?

[gardyloo]

So this botnet rivals supercomputers for power as long as it's working on some purely parallelizeable problem. Like, for instance, sending spam messages.

Re:Follow the money

[Anonymous Coward]

As a side issue, how hard is it for an ISP to see an IP sending out the typical spam mail and closing off that IP/client. That may be dangerous ground. Show an ISP who can invade their users' traffic enough to sniff out a particular worm, and you'll have the **AA swooping in demanding that the ISP also sniff out illegal torrents, .gov insisting that their ability to catalog your pr0n collection is more important, bad parents insisting that the ISP filter out anything that might show their children a boob, etc.

Re:Co-opt it.. remove it.

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I think the real question is -- what are the FBI / police doing about it? There's a huge, ongoing, major crime happening, and there is apparently no police activity at all.

Rich.

Where's the investigation

[Tom]

Makes you wonder why the FBI and other police forces have enough resources to go after Joe sharing the latest CD release, but apparently not enough to do something about what probably is the largest computer crime in history.

I guess the answer has something to do with priorities. Which is exactly what I think the problem is.

monoculture problem?

[Gary W. Longsine]

I'm not convinced that the monopoly presence of Windows accounts for enormous Windows based botnets. There are what, something like 25 million Macintosh computers running Mac OS X, and most of those are running the same version of Mac OS X. That's a big enough pool, yet we don't see botnets on the Macintosh at all.

Suppose the market were evenly divided, 1/4 Windows, 1/4 Linux, 1/4 Macintosh, and 1/4 online game consoles that are always connected to the internet. Where would the botnets be hosted? Probably Windows. Botnets will begin to run on other platforms within about 48 hours after the security of Windows systems rises to a level equivalent to the other available platforms.