Just How Bad Is the Storm Worm? - Security Fix

The Storm worm has earned its share of superlatives, but security experts disagree over just how many computers running Microsoft Windows have been compromised by the e-mail worm. Some new figures released from Microsoft and estimates obtained by Security Fix may help shed some light on the size and sheer firepower of what’s being called one of the largest and most sophisticated cyber fraud networks ever constructed.

Some experts have put the number of Storm-infected PCs at close to 10 million, but most estimates are more conservative, pegging the infected pool at between a few hundred thousand and a million or so machines.

Storm size and capabilities may, or may not, be exaggerated. Some observers have estimated that Storm may have as much as a petabyte of memory at its disposal. The human brain may have as much as a petabyte of storage available to it.

There will be other, more organized, possibly more effective efforts to aggregate computing power in the wild. Which means we have yet another lush tangle of unintended consequences waiting to, ah, emerge. On the other hand, this sort of potential threat is genuinely global in scale, and may encourge more political cooperation among major (and minor) players designed to combat it.

The problem with that, of course, is that government may decide that the easiest way to control such problems is to confiscate everybodys’ computers. Or put a government security watchdog in every one. I do expect, though, that the next generation will grow up with vastly different concepts of personal privacy than are current today or, especially, yesterday.

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