Storm Worm Adding Millions of PCs to Botnet

The storm worm has built a botnet of perhaps as many as 10 million PCs using a revolving strategy of current events and eye-grabbing "headlines" to lure victims into what may be the single largest operating botnet. The "Zhelatin gang"—named after the trojan it installed—was responsible for what started out as the "storm worm." First spotted earlier this year, the spread of the "storm worm" started via e-mails purporting to provide information on some dangerous storms in Europe at the close of January. Users who fell for it were directed to a web site containing malicious code aimed at turning Windows PCs into spam bots.
Bottom line: be wary of any unexpected email you receive that tries to link you to some website, even if it's from someone you know. You get virus emails from people you know, since the virus will use the email address book of the infected computer.
Here are some example headlines that have been used; the misspellings make them seem shady even at first glance:

• A killer at 11, he's free at 21 and kill again!
• U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has kicked German Chancellor Angela Merkel
• British Muslims Genocide
• Naked teens attack home director
• 230 dead as storm batters Europe
• Re: Your text
• Radical Muslim drinking enemies's blood
• Chinese missile shot down Russian satellite
• Chinese missile shot down Russian aircraft
• Chinese missile shot down USA satellite
• Saddam Hussein alive!
• Venezuelan leader: "Let's the War beginning"
• Fidel Castro dead

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