The Storm worm: the botnet that started with a weather headline
In January 2007 an email about deadly storms in Europe spread a Trojan that built one of the largest peer-to-peer botnets of its time.
THE 2007 STORY
Topic
Security
Security stories rarely end when the headline fades. A worm that spread in an afternoon can shape email filtering for a decade, and a court case about copy protection can still decide what you are allowed to do with a file you bought.
These explainers follow the incidents and arguments that defined internet security from the mass-mailing worms of the early 2000s to the profit-driven botnets that replaced them.
Timeline
- 2001The Anna Kournikova worm shows that a toolkit and a celebrity name are enough to cause a global outbreak.
- 2004Mass-mailing worms such as MyDoom and Netsky dominate mail traffic.
- 2007The Storm worm builds one of the largest peer-to-peer botnets seen to date.
- 2008Conficker begins spreading through an unpatched Windows service.
Explainers
The Anna Kournikova worm: a toolkit, a tennis star and a global outbreak
In February 2001 an email promising a photo of the tennis player spread worldwide. It was built with a point-and-click virus generator.
THE 2001 STORY
When Bill Gates told people to buy CDs: Microsoft and the DRM debate
In December 2006 Bill Gates said digital rights management caused too much pain for honest buyers, at a time when Microsoft was selling DRM technology.
THE 2006 STORY
The 2005 Sidekick hack: a celebrity phone breach and online account security
In February 2005 the address book and notes from Paris Hilton’s T-Mobile Sidekick appeared online. The breach showed how weak account recovery could expose data synced to the cloud.
THE 2005 STORY
The DMCA: how a 1998 copyright law reshaped what you can do with technology
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act banned breaking copy protection and created notice-and-takedown. Both rules have been controversial ever since.
THE 1998–2010 STORY
The ILOVEYOU virus: the love letter that infected the world
In May 2000 an email titled “ILOVEYOU” spread from the Philippines to tens of millions of computers in days, overwriting files and flooding mail servers.
THE 2000 STORY
Mydoom: the fastest-spreading email worm of its time
In January 2004 Mydoom spread by fake bounced-email messages, opened a backdoor on infected PCs, and used them to attack SCO’s website.
THE 2004 STORY
Code Red: the worm that attacked the White House website
In July 2001 the Code Red worm infected hundreds of thousands of Microsoft web servers in a day, defacing pages and aiming a flood of traffic at whitehouse.gov.
THE 2001 STORY
Tools
Password strength checker
Estimate how hard a password is to guess. Everything runs locally; nothing is sent anywhere.
File hash checker
Calculate SHA-256, SHA-1 or SHA-512 checksums for a file and compare them with a published value.