I am pretty much like everybody else when it comes to computer viruses – seems like there’s a new one every time I turn around and I’m starting to tune out the news about the latest one. Big mistake. A newly posted report about the most recent major computer virus epidemic known as Sapphire / Slammer makes for some VERY sobering reading. S / S represents a quantum leap in computer virus capabilities and in retrospect what it did is very, very scary.
From the report: “The Sapphire Worm was the fastest computer worm in history. As it began spreading throughout the Internet, it doubled in size every 8.5 seconds. It infected more than 90 percent of vulnerable hosts within 10 minutes…The worm infected at least 75,000 hosts, perhaps considerably more, and caused network outages and such unforeseen consequences as canceled airline flights, interference with elections, and ATM failures…Sapphire spread nearly two orders of magnitude [i.e., 100 times] faster than [the previous historical virus attack known as] Code Red…While Sapphire did not contain a malicious payload (!?! – SFT italics), it caused considerable harm simply by overloading networks and taking database servers out of operation…”
What happens next time when whoever released this thing gets a malicious payload subroutine added on board for Round Two? It will be a Warhol Worm…