October 22, 2007

Storm Worm now just a squall

Security researcher estimates 15 million PCs have been infected by the Storm Trojan, but the majority have been cleaned up and are no longer part of the Storm network

The Storm network itself is constantly changing, and has used a variety of technologies that have made it an interesting phenomenon to study. In addition to the P-to-P network, it has used rootkit software to disguise its presence on the PC and a server-switching technique called "fast flux," which makes the Storm servers harder to find on the network.

It's also developed some interesting ways of keeping researchers such as Enright at bay. "If you're a researcher and you hit the pages hosting the malware too much... there is an automated process that automatically launches a denial of service [attack] against you," he said. This attack, which floods the victim's computer with a deluge of Internet traffic, knocked part of the UC San Diego network offline when it first struck.

Lately Storm has been responsible for a large quantity of "pump and dump" spam, which tries to temporarily boost the price of penny stocks. But one area that does not seem to be of interest to Storm's creators is identity theft. "Believe it or not, credit card numbers aren't worth that much money," Enright said. "It's much better to make money... via pump and dump."

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