Am I being paranoid?

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 8:35 am

I recently saw a TV program about the spread of a sophisticated worm that is infecting millions of computers around the globe. It just sits there, not doing any harm, but very difficult to detect. Apparently there are two source countries, Russia and China. The question being asked is "what is it for?" and the scary assumption is that a huge hub of computers that can be used as drones to direct messages to a nominated location is being set up. Similar to the one of the 15yo who brought down Yahoo a couple of years back, but much much bigger. It could be used to bring down a complete country if big enough and targeted at many key targets. Sounds like a totally new type of warfare and terrifying in its consequences.

Well for a couple of years I was a member of a Russian music site, "Legal Tunes". I am not any longer, but when I was it regularly sent emails to my home address and more importantly, on the rare occasions I bought some music from them, it was downloaded direct to my computer from the site. During the period I was a member I didn't receive a lot of spam to my email box, so my details didn't end up on a phished list, but I am wondering about the worm.

My questions, does anyone know more about this worm? Is there any software for detecting if it is present? (apparently it can evade run of the mill firewalls and AV.) Is this worm a real threat in the way described or is this another example of a TV presenter not letting the facts get in the way of a good story?

Discussion welcome.

Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:53 am

wilburwright wrote:

It just sits there, not doing any harm, but very difficult to detect.

If it is taking up space it will be detectable. I have had to manually clean off various worms which spread via shared drives and which, for some reason, my favourite antivirus does not detect.

The TV presenter might have been "making mountains out of molehills" just in order to get some stuff into his airtime, and make it sound scary.

A little thing that is not doing anything now, but has the potential to jump up and wreak havoc ... now that IS scary ...