Published in News

Giant Net worm is heading your way

by on21 October 2007

Image

Internet Storm Worm growing


The Storm
worm has been building a large botnet since early 2007.  It has been infecting computers and adding them to a botnet so that the computers can be directed to do things their owners know nothing about. It has been used to spew millions of spam messages globally as well as to send phony e-mail messages with infected attachments and phony e-cards with links that are infected.

The latest use of the Storm worm is to use mp3 files that are titled ‘beatles.mp3’ and ‘elvis.mp3’. The audio file that is attached includes a digitized voice directing the listener to buy a certain stock. As the file speed goes fast and then slows down and reportedly has been given as many as 40 different names, it’s a nightmare for system administrators of corporate networks. System administrators are having a difficult time trying to block Storm worm because it does not have one specific signature.

As if that is not scary enough, Joe Stewart, a Senior Security Researcher at SecureWorks, claims that he has discovered just this week that the Storm worm's botnet has begun to subdivide.  Stewart says this suggests that those in control of the Storm worm botnet might be planning to “sell” parts of it to others for further proliferation.

A word to the wise: check your antivirus software definitions and update them, now.

Read more here.

Last modified on 22 October 2007
Rate this item
(0 votes)