Storm Worm - Worst Virus Attack

The Storm worm authors are waging a multi-pronged attack and generating the largest virus attack some researchers say they’ve seen in 2 years.

“We are basically in the midst of an incredibly large attack,” said Adam Swidler, a senior manager - security company Postini. “It’s the most sustained attack that we’ve seen. There’s been nine to 10 days straight days of attack at this level.”

Swidler said in an interview with InformationWeek, the attack started a little more than a week ago, and Postini since then has recorded 200 million spam e-mails luring users to malicious Web sites. Last Thursday, however, the company tracked 42 million Storm-related messages in that day alone. Before this attack, an average day sees about 1 million virus-laden e-mails, according to Postini. As of Tuesday afternoon, Postini researchers were predicting they would see that day between 4 million and 6 million virus e-mails — 99% of them associated with the Storm worm.

While the number of spam e-mails has dropped significantly, it’s still far above normal levels, so Swidler isn’t ready to say the attack is over.

The viruses is not embedded in the e-mails or in attachments. The e-mails, many of them otherwise empty, contain only a link to a compromised Web site where machines are infected with a generic downloader. This helps pull the computers into the malware authors’ growing botnet, while also leaving them open for further infection.
(read all: informationweek)