Neil
18-Mar-2008, 11:52 AM
Quite an interesting read! - http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/7103/
Part of the article:-
How big is Storm's botnet? Some estimates think the botnet could be as large as 50 million computers. It's entirely possible that one person is behind the worm, pulling the strings, and is able to focus the power of this zombie-network, however they like. “In terms of power, the botnet utterly blows the supercomputers away,” chief anti-spam technologist Matt Sergeat, from MessageLabs, was quoted as saying. “If you calculate pure theoretical throughput, then I'm sure the botnet has more capacity than IBM's BlueGene. If you sat them down to play chess, the botnet would win."
So far, experts have seen the activity of Storm's botnet periodically spike, for a few hours at a time. But it is estimated that only about %10 of the botnet's power has been applied in these activity spikes -- if the person pulling the strings of Storm were to fully engage the zombie-networks, the full Denial-of-Service powers could possibly be enough to cause severe chaos -- such as overwhelmingly networks of even the largest of companies and services.
It is also possible that the services of the 'Storm' infection could be 'rented' to service nefarious criminal purposes, such as mega-spam campaigns, or possibly even to launch some sort of mercantile cyberwar.
Part of the article:-
How big is Storm's botnet? Some estimates think the botnet could be as large as 50 million computers. It's entirely possible that one person is behind the worm, pulling the strings, and is able to focus the power of this zombie-network, however they like. “In terms of power, the botnet utterly blows the supercomputers away,” chief anti-spam technologist Matt Sergeat, from MessageLabs, was quoted as saying. “If you calculate pure theoretical throughput, then I'm sure the botnet has more capacity than IBM's BlueGene. If you sat them down to play chess, the botnet would win."
So far, experts have seen the activity of Storm's botnet periodically spike, for a few hours at a time. But it is estimated that only about %10 of the botnet's power has been applied in these activity spikes -- if the person pulling the strings of Storm were to fully engage the zombie-networks, the full Denial-of-Service powers could possibly be enough to cause severe chaos -- such as overwhelmingly networks of even the largest of companies and services.
It is also possible that the services of the 'Storm' infection could be 'rented' to service nefarious criminal purposes, such as mega-spam campaigns, or possibly even to launch some sort of mercantile cyberwar.