'Storm Worm' sweeps the globe

by admin January 22, 2007 at 11:27 am

“Storm Worm”, one of the larger Trojan horse attacks in recent years, is baiting people with timely information about a deadly, real-life storm front, security researchers said on Friday.

Over an eight-hour period on Thursday, malicious emails were sent across the globe to hundreds of thousands of people, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure.

People who open the attachment then unknowingly become part of a botnet. A botnet serves as an army of commandeered computers, which are later used by attackers without their owners’ knowledge.

Storm Worm carries the subject line “230 dead as storm batters Europe”, Hypponen said, noting the unusual twist to the email.

Read more: ZDNet.co.uk