News Technology Cybercrime War of the cyber worm: the most destructive attack on the internet
The new arrival in Phil's honeynet was clearly a worm, and it began to attract the Tribe's attention immediately. After that first infection at 5:20pm on Thursday 20 November 2008, there came a few classic bits of malware and then the newcomer again. And then again. And again. The infection rate kept accelerating. By Friday morning, Phil's colleague Vinod Yegneswaran notified him that their honeynet was under significant attack. By then, very little else was showing on the infections log. The worm was spreading exponentially, crowding in so fast that it shouldered aside all the ordinary daily fare. If the typical inflow of infection was like a steady drip from a tap, this new strain seemed shot out of a fire hose.
....
TJ Campana, senior manager for investigations for Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, was working until 10pm most nights in his office up in one of Microsoft's Redmond sprockets. His boss would stop by, surprised to see him in so late.
"What are you doing?" he'd ask.
"Conficker."
"Everything OK?"
"Well, the internet's melting. We're just keeping it from melting completely."
...
The bad guys behind Conficker, its unknown botmaster, would prove to be worthy adversaries. They were villains in the truest sense, talented programmers bent on using their powers for evil. And the world war was about nothing less than the soul of the future, the soul of the new global mind.
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This is an edited extract from Worm: the story of the First Digital World War by Mark Bowden.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/19/war-cyber-worm-attack-internet
Disappointed that the text was just a preview .... but the writing was riveting.