With a handful of high-profile prosecutions of bot herders in 2007, criminals will be seeking better ways to cover their tracks. The Storm Worm set a worrying precedent. Also known as Nuwar, the Storm Worm has been the most versatile malware on record.
The creators released thousands of variants and changed coding techniques, infection methods and social engineering schemes far more than any other threat in history.
Storm created the largest peer-to-peer botnet ever. McAfee expects others will ride the coattails of that questionable success, pushing up the number of PCs turned into bots. Bots are computer programmes that give cyber crooks full control over PCs. Bot programmes typically get installed surreptitiously on the PCs of unknowing computer users.
