14 DAY TRIAL // This has to be the best analysis I've ever seen. This report shows how the masterminds behind the Storm virus have made this infection so popular, where it came from and how it evolved. If you ever wanted to find out anything about Storm, then the report written by the guys at the Cyber-threat Analytics is the best thing to read. There has been a lot of talk about Storm as it has clearly been one of the most popular viruses out there this year. Sure, other viruses infect millions of computers worldwide too, but how many actually make them drones in a botnet?
Storm is considered to be such a great virus, not only for what it does by itself but also because of the way it's coordinated. Some viruses are known for using a certain line to trick people into getting infected, but not this one - Storm is known for the way it changes perspective and always manages to find a new weakness that people have and that it can exploit. So, yes, rather than making a virus difficult to stop, these guys made a virus hard to resist, instead of tricking machines, they're tricking users. Storm has been transmitted via clicking on links in e-mails, but before everyone noticed that a certain type of message was Storm-infected, the people behind it already changed the persuasive text in the e-mails twice.
They have been known to exploit any passion or feeling that a human might have. They've went from making them click, to help some people in Europe that have been hit by a storm (that was the first sham used by the virus creators, thus the name) to "click here to get a free program to help you find out scores at football". So, they've tried everything, and that's why they have one of the most powerful botnets out there, some say, with more computing power than Blue Gene.
Further more, this virus has been called a worm, because it spreads by itself. So, basically, when it lands on a computer and infects it, it then starts to send spam e-mails to other users, all containing links that if clicked will cause even more virus infections! So, basically Storm has been used for a lot of spam, and is probably the primary cause of why we have been facing a huge amount of unwanted messages as of late.
The worst part about it, or the best, if you see things trough the hackers' perspective, is the fact that it was actively updated, to adapt to operating system upgrades, malware removal heuristics and any other security patches. I can say that this is one of the worst viruses I've ever seen!
However, there is a lot more to learn about this virus, and you may do so by following this link, to the research I already mentioned. It explains things really well, has a lot of techie details, and also contains (at the bottom) a large list of all the executables disabled by Storm.
Also, you may want to check out this site, that has been specially designed to fight Storm.