Storm: the largest botnet in the world?
Storm may not be the most creative or malicious piece of malware ever written, but it’s on track to become the most productive; threat researchers’ recent estimates put the number of PCs it has infected at more than 1 million.
First showing up on researchers’ radars about a year ago, Storm is defined by some as a worm, others as a Trojan Horse See FAQ. Though it has gone by many names, Storm — referring to the spam blasts it’s been behind that mention storms — has stuck. Although Storm doesn’t use any particularly inventive or malicious techniques, such as erasing files on a hard drive or recording keystrokes to capture passwords and personal information, it has gained notoriety through its writers’ ability to update and adapt both the malware’s code and the spam blasts that lure people to become infected with it — all with the purpose of building a giant botnet.