New Trojan deadliest in history
Storm, the Trojan that Hoovers PCs into hacker-controlled botnets, roared back into life last month in several waves, security researchers said earlier this week, and has blown by 2005's Sober to become the most prolific e-mail-borne malware ever.
“This is the biggest since Sober in mid-to-late 2005,” said Sam Masiello, the director of threat research at MX Logic, referring to a long-lasting worm whose variants struck repeatedly in the second half of 2005, often in extremely high numbers. In November 2006, for instance, e-mail filtering companies reported malware-laden e-mail counts spiking 1,500 per cent in a week, and said they were intercepting four times the usual number of infected messages.
According to MX Logic, Storm -- a bot Trojan that collects compromised computers into large networks of ready-to-use PCs -- has broken Sober's records. Thanks to Storm, the Englewood, Colo. managed e-mail security vendor tracked a July jump in malicious e-mail of 1,700 percent over June.
