A new worm that leaves behind two Trojan horse programs has begun spreading over the Internet, and may be paving the way for a crippling distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
In just eight months the Storm worm has infected more than 20 million computers and built a zombie army -- or botnet -- capable of launching DDoS attacks that could be used against any organisation or even damage critical infrastructure, according to security experts.
The owners of the Storm botnet, whose identities are as yet unknown, could be preparing to sell off the "services" of segments of the network, according to Joe Stewart, a researcher from managed security services company SecureWorks.
An e-mail worm is recruiting computers for a coordinated attack on antivirus vendor Symantec's Web site.
The latest variant of the Zafi worm was discovered on Wednesday and unlike the previous two variants, Zafi.C has been coded to launch a DDoS attack against Google.com, Microsoft.com and miniszterelnok.hu, which is the Web site of the Hungarian Prime Minister.
The world of IT security is in chaos, with CSOs seemingly on the front lines of a full scale global cyberwar being fought out by government hackers, botnet-controlling criminal gangs and compromised Web sites. Can we ever hope to keep networks safe in such an environment?
Botnet operators have become public enemy number-one as consumers, businesses and governments fall foul to identity theft, DDoS attacks and spam. Yet no one appears to be able to stop the spread of bots -- except maybe the media.
The latest variant of the Zafi worm was discovered on Wednesday and unlike the previous two variants, Zafi.C has been coded to launch a DDoS attack against Google.com, Microsoft.com and miniszterelnok.hu, which is the Web site of the Hungarian Prime Minister.
Plans are afoot to attack spammers by launching the kind of cyber-attack favoured by organised crime and hackers with an axe to grind.
Security researchers have been infiltrating denial of service 'botnets' to study what may be an unstoppable Distributed Denial of Service (DoS) technique.
A very clever mass-mailing worm is spreading rapidly across the Internet and has many different components, each timed to trigger different processes.
Security researchers worked overtime in 2007, which turned out to be a nightmare for software vendors from day one.
ZoneAlarm Pro 5.5 is the best software firewall available to PC users today.
We recommend installing Windows XP SP2 but only after Microsoft has had a few weeks to work out the kinks.
In 2002, users and companies got a respite from the disruptive viruses of 2001. But a more sophisticated generation of worms is on the way.
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