Schneier posts an excellent article describing the Storm worm: it is more fascinating than I thought. The masters of this worm are doing everything I'd do, and then a good bit more.
Most malware before this was naive, shortsighted, pointless, stupid. They exploited interesting tactics, but they had no strategy to speak of. Storm, on the other hand, has clever tactics and a serious strategy. This is the real deal. This is formiddable. This is what the next generation of computer software will have to defend against.
The software of today is laughably insecure against a competent attacker. But previously, we didn't have a competent attacker. Now, we do.
One would argue that the authors of Storm are villains. I guess they are villains. But I respect them because they're serious villains. Finally the software industry has a serious opponent. Finally, software security cannot be regarded as just a PR problem any more. Someone has risen up to the challenge. And they are good.
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