The Storm worm threat is still growing. One researcher said recently that his company alone blocked 20 million emails carrying the worm, in the last few months. Another company saw 120 million in just five days.
The goal of the worm is to corral your computer into a botnet, or remotely controlled network usually used to send out huge quantities of spam. There could be up to 1 million Storm-compromised computers already, all set to do the bidding of the hackers.
Such a large network of zombie computers suggests the criminals might have other things in mind, such as denial of service attacks. In a DoS attack, many computers send requests to a web site at the same time, overwhelming it and thus preventing legitimate users from accessing it.
Do not open email attachments, and beware of unexpected news stories and e-greeting cards popping up in your inbox. These are the favorite attack methods of Storm. Also, of course, keep all your security programs up to date.
You do have a full set of security programs, don’t you? If not, get them!
Syd Tash is a noted computer security consultant and author of How to Protect Your Computer Online. He has been keeping Internet surfers safe and secure since the last century. Find out how he does it; protect your own computer with five layers of protection right here: =>http://mypcsecuritysite.com
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