The infamous Storm Worm is getting out of hand, according to researchers at SecureWorks, who say the worm has now infected nearly 2 million computers.

The original Storm Worm appeared in January of this year and infected thousands of computers around the world, turning them into zombie slaves of a botnet designed to send spam. 

In recent months the number of infected computers has increased dramatically and security researchers are worried about the damage hackers could inflict if they unleash a denial-of-service attack.

Joe Stewart, senior security researcher for SecureWorks said: “The number of unique, infected hosts (bots), from which the attack is being launched by email went from 2,815 in the beginning of 2007 through the end of May to a total of 1.7 million for the months of June and July.”

Adam Swidler, senior manager of software security firm Postini told InformationWeek that on July 24, its researchers were able to tracked 46.2 million malicious messages and more than 99% of them are from Storm worm.

SecureWorks has issued a statement providing advice on how to protect against the Storm worm:

• For corporate computer users, as well as home computer users, the best defense is to be aware of the scams connected to the Storm trojan, which include emails containing links leading to fake e-Cards apparently from family members and friends, news stories highlighting catastrophic events, etc.
• “The Storm trojan relies on social engineering as its best ally so it is really important that computer users keep their guard up and be suspicious of any unsolicited email containing an attachment or a link,” continued Stewart. “Even if it mentions something you are familiar with or promises some sort of critical data, always check with the sender to see what it is and why they sent it.”
• Another way computer users can protect themselves from the Storm trojan is to block peer-to-peer networking. “When the Storm trojan runs, it attempts to link up with other infected hosts via peer-to-peer networking,” said Stewart. “If that function is blocked, then the user’s computer cannot become a part of the Storm botnet.”
• In order to fully protect one’s corporate computer users from these threats, organizations must engage an in-house security team or a managed security services firm. These teams employ experts who can track and block threats coming in via email, the web or instant messaging based on their wider view of Internet traffic and their expertise in these kinds of scams.

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Entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 11:27 pm under Security.

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.
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