Conficker, Coreflood and Other Malware Madness on Your PC

There are pieces of malware that make a big splash such as Conficker and then those such as Coreflood that for a variety of reasons do a better job of flying under the radar. In the end, the long-term success of a piece of malware to a large extent depends on it being able to avoid both detection and sustained scrutiny by the security community. Doing so can allow attackers to build mammoth botnets to the tune of hundreds of thousands of zombie computers - or, in the case of Conficker, millions.

The usual endgame for the hackers, of course, is to turn the mountains of stolen data into money. After discussions with some security vendors and researchers, eWEEK has compiled a short list of some of the stealthier and more persistent pieces of malware out there today.