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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.'"
Where's Paul Atredies when you need him?
Imagine a beowulf clus.... never mind.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
I just don't see why if 1) there are known decompiled versions of it and 2) the network activity can be monitored. why 3) Hasn't code been written to exploit the 'sploit and shut them down. Something that infiltrates, but keeps them running for - oh, say a week - while the exploit percolates through the system, and then kills and patches the running process.
meh
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
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!
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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Yes, nasty ASCII art.
Just in case you hadn't guessed (which it appears that the meeedia has not) - This Is A Trojan. Which means that it's Powered By Stupid People (tm). A worm would be Powered By Stupid Programmers (tm).
The Storm Worm is in fact already defined - It was an IIS worm. Please, feel free to look at the reputable AV lists.