Storm and the Future of Social Engineering

Albert writes "Storm shows several key characteristics, some new and advanced. It uses cunning social engineering techniques — such as tying spam campaigns to a current event or site of interest — as well as a blend of email and the Web to spread. It is highly coordinated, yet decentralized — and with Storm using the latest generation of P2P technology, it cannot be disabled by simply 'cutting off its head.' In addition, Storm is self-propagating — once infected, computers send out massive amounts of Storm spam to keep recruiting new nodes."

aim lower, for the honour of the old school

[Anonymous Coward]

it cannot be disabled by simply 'cutting off its head.'

Off with their goolies!

Sounds like Prey

[Atheose]

Paging Michael Crichton?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(novel) [wikipedia.org]

Lets get the ISPs involved!

[thomasdz]

Since the article mentions "and with Storm using the latest generation of P2P technology"
I think the only reasonable solution to this is to for all of us to call our ISPs and demand that this "P2P" thing be either throttled back or somehow forced to stop, perhaps by sending out fake RST packets whenever the ISP sees "P2P traffic. Yeah, let's all do that so we can nip this Storm bot in the bud.

Re:Why. . ?

[Cormacus]

Thats exactly what someone who had been infected would say.

Never give out your password...

[scrib]

Hi Eric Please forward us the username and password that your using so we can login and test this problem

Never give out your password - to people who use the wrong homophone!

Re:Self created problem?

[Alpha Whisky]

I hope for his sake he never signed a contract with them agreeing the, otherwise unenforceable, clause:

Copying or disseminating any of this message is prohibited.

Somehow, I suspect, posting the whole email to Slashdot might just count as disseminating. Actually, come to think of it, I just Copied and disseminated a bit of their email, and do I care?

Re:How is this news?

[somersault]

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Link please?

Re:Self created problem?

[Chrisq]

I'd rather inseminate than deseminate

Re:Never give out your password...

[cizoozic]

Hi Eric Please forward us the username and password that your using so we can login and test this problem

Never give out your password - to people who use the wrong homophone!

ummm... "you're" and "your" are not homophones.

Yeah, yeah, we've all heard it before, they're "just roommates."