According to New Zealand computer Scientist Peter Gutman, the Storm Worm Botnet can be classified as one of the world’s top 10 super computers. There are between one and ten million computers infected with the Storm worm. Peter Gutman made his calculations based on combining the number of CPUs and the amount of RAM in the infected PCs. With approximately 1-10 million 2.8GHz P4s and 1-10 Petabytes of RAM the Storm Worm Botnet has access to more computing power than the top 10 supercomputers combined.
The Storm Worm has spread primarily through infected email attachments, video attachments and infected web pages. The most recent being a malicious .exe file on a page titled “Download Tor.” The rootkit that the Storm Worm installs makes it all but impossible to remove from an infected PC. If you have been infected with the Storm Worm, the easiest means for removal is a fresh installation of Windows.
It should be noted, that the top 10 supercomputers are always on and optimized for performance. Computers in the Storm Worm Botnet do go offline from time to time making the amount of CPUs and RAM at its disposal sporadic. What Peter Gutman’s calculations do show, however, is the growing menace that the Storm Worm has become.
Sources: ZDNet, Full Disclosure, Top 500, Sgeir (Image)
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Tags: Internet, Security, Storm
4 responses
Sep 7, 2007 at 5:19 pm
It’s a backhanded compliment when you’re trusted enough to attract this kind of malware emails.
I thought I’d pass on the Tor Project’s official comment on the Storm spoof emails:
====
The Tor Project, a US non-profit organisation producing Internet
privacy software, is issuing an urgent warning about a spam email
being circulated as a fake promotion for their software.
The real Tor software provides privacy on the Internet to journalists,
bloggers and human rights activists all over the world. The spam email
promotes the virtues of the software, but then directs people to a
series of fake websites that contain malicious code that will attempt
to take over visiting machines, and the downloaded software is fake
and equally dangerous to run.
The real website is hosted at http://tor.eff.org and the Tor
software can be downloaded from there. Users are able to check that
they have received the official version by following the instructions
at: http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/VerifyingSignatures
Shava Nerad, Development Director for the Tor Project said, “I am
disgusted that criminals who want to recruit more machines for their
illegal activities should trade on our reputation for providing
privacy on the Internet. Fortunately we already have systems in place
so that people can verify that they are downloading the official
software. But this is a distraction from our work that we could do
without.”
====
Of course, we encourage people to go to our actual site, download and use Tor, donate, and volunteer!
Thanks!
Shava Nerad
Development Director, The Tor Project.
El gusano Botnet, puede estar en la actualidad entre los 10 superordenadores del mundo :
Sep 10, 2007 at 9:08 am
[...] De acuerdo con Peter Gutman, cientÃfico informático de Nueva Zelanda, el gusano Bonet puede estar entre las 10 computadoras más potentes del mundo, ya que se piensa que pueden haber entre 1 – 10 millones de ordenadores infectados con este gusano. [...]
PhotoGeek week #21 | photogeek.tv Podcast for the geek photographer professional prosumer or keen beginner
Sep 19, 2007 at 11:20 pm
[...] Storm Worm grows to super computer size according to New Zealand research. [...]
V0lTr4n Bl0G » El gusano Botnet, puede estar en la actualidad entre los 10 superordenadores del mundo
Nov 12, 2007 at 9:20 pm
[...] De acuerdo con Peter Gutman, cientÃfico informático de Nueva Zelanda, el gusano Bonet puede estar entre las 10 computadoras más potentes del mundo, ya que se piensa que pueden haber entre 1 – 10 millones de ordenadores infectados con este gusano.Peter Gutman realizó sus cálculos basados sobre el números de CPU y la cantidad de memoria RAM de los ordenadores infectados, o sea que la potencia de bonet está entre 1 – 10 Petabyes. [...]
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