Storm Worm Hits Computers Around The World

[Humpty]

Computer virus writers started to use raging European storms on Friday to attack thousands of computers in an unusual real-time assault, head of research at Finnish data security firm F-Secure told Reuters.

 

The virus, which the company named "Storm Worm," is sent to hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses globally, with the e-mail's subject line saying "230 dead as storm batters Europe."

 

The attached file contains the so-called malware that can infiltrate computer systems.

 

"What makes this exceptional is the timely nature of the attack," Mikko Hypponen, head of research at F-Secure said.

 

Hypponen said thousands of computers around the world, most in private use, had been affected.

 

He said most users would not notice the malware, or trojan, which creates a back door to the computer that can be exploited later to steal data or to use the computer to post spam.

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[Eldmannen]

I think that maybe there will be less worms in the future.

All major operating systems now come with firewalls, since XP2 even Windows XP has a built-in firewall, though a lot of people don't have SP2 since either, they don't know or care to upgrade, or they cant due to illegal copy of Windows XP.

But with Windows Vista, everybody will have a firewall, since it will ship with it by default, and probably enabled.

Also, I think that in Vista, less people will run as administrator.

 

So I think it will probably be less worms that spread like Code Red and Nimda.

 

Also with more people having new computers with CPU that support NX-bit / XD-bit, more people will have enabled what is in Windows called "Data Execution Prevention", which will make software less prone to exploits.

 

So I think there will be worms that spread via e-mail as attachments, and more spyware, and more e-mail spam, and IM spam.

 

With more people getting Internet in India and Africa, there will be more Nigeria letters, about the son of an dead government official who needs your help to transfer a zillion million dollar and in exchange he will split the money with you and you will get 40% of it.