BiggAndyy the Magazine

From Reuters

The social engineering of virus writers took another twist with the release of the “Storm Worm”.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Computer virus writers started to use raging European storms on Friday to attack thousands of computers in an unusual real-time assault, head of research at Finnish data security firm F-Secure (FSC1V.HE: Quote, Profile , Research) told Reuters.

The virus, which the company named “Storm Worm” is sent to hundreds of thousands of email addresses globally, with the e-mail’s subject line saying “230 dead as storm batters Europe.”

The attached file contains the so-called malware that can infiltrate computer systems.

“What makes this exceptional is the timely nature of the attack,” Mikko Hypponen, head of research at F-Secure said.

Hypponen said thousands of computers around the world, most in private use, had been affected.

He said most users would not notice the malware, or trojan, which creates a back door to the computer that can be exploited later to steal data or to use the computer to post spam.

This is a closed loop now. Thousands of compromised machines (bot farms) are sending emails with “real time” social engineering to thousands of other machines to recruit them into the bot farm. Then those machines compromised will be used in the next “real time” attack.

We security minded propellerheads were thinking things were quiet they were not. The bot farms were being quietly harvested by the spammers and hackerz until a super saturation point was reached. Now there are so many that it is probably nigh impossible to eliminate them all from the scene.

We are one small step closer to the collective consciousness of the internet?