Big threat, Low Impact!!
That’s how you can describe the aftermath of the much talked about Kama Sutra worm that has been topping the security bulletins for past week or so, as its trigger date approached yesterday when the time bomb was supposed to go off!!
This worm, more dreaded than others due to the evil it can unleash by deleting most common file types including but not limited to .DOC(the Microsoft Word Document), .PDF(portable document format, one of the most popular formats for sharing electronic documents) & .ZIP(a zip archive, the most popular file compression format) files from the infected PC running a version of Microsoft Windows, was thwarted before it could unleash its terror. News bulletins have been going on about this & warning people to patch up their PCs and anti-virus softwares etc. to counter this worm. A lot of people woke up from their slumber to clean their infected PCs and hence not much damage was done by this supposedly dreadful worm.
Some people however weren’t in mood for taking any chances or those who didn’t have time to clean their PCs shut them down for the day to let the storm pass. One such bunch was Milan, Italy’s government computers, 10,000 of which were shutdown on thursday itself when they came to know of the infection in them, since they didn’t have enough time before the worm started waging its war against their helpless files!! They’ll probably be switching them back on Saturday once the dust has settled down, to clean the infected PCs since the worm is scheduled to unleash its terror again on 3rd March(now please don’t tell me that it’ll be the same again on 3rd April & on 3rd of every month).
This worm is more destructive than the other ones in recent past, but it either didn’t spread quickly or because of its time-bomb like nature, people had enough of fore-warning to clean their infected PCs.
Source - Yahoo! News
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No Impact??? 80,000+ damges in India and 1 million + worldwide
It was nothing compared to attacks of the past.
Sujith, first get your facts right. Infected machines doesn’t count up to the damage caused, since infected machines can be cleaned or in this case, switched off to let the time pass & can later be cleaned. Damage is accessed by the files that this worm deleted & its aftermath, ie., the financial importance of those deleted files. Secondly, I’d advise that you read the post again, I never said “no impact”, infact what I said was “low impact”, lower than expected. These numbers that you’ve mentioned may seem a large to you, but considering it on the global scale and comparing it to the impact of worms in the past(Sober & family can be one case), this indeed appears to be low, lower than expected I should say.
This worm could’ve done much much more damage than this since its one of the most dreadful ones, which deletes all common files like Word & PDF documents, ZIP archives, these files are the ones used every single hour by almost everyone. So you can’t even imagine what this worm could’ve done, it could’ve wreaked havoc far greater than what Sober did & Sober did cause billions of dollars in damages!! But one benefit that went in favour of people was that this was a time-bomb like worm scheduled to go off at a pre-determined time, quite possibly designed by a nutter who likes to have some fun at other people’s expense!! So a lot of people got enough time to either clean their PCs or they did the next best thing, switch off their machines!! Had it been like other ones which unleash their terror as soon as they are downloaded on the target PC, it indeed could’ve caused damages in the amounts expected or more than that!!