I'm intrigued and disheartened to discover this week that our fascination with the climate has finally invaded the IT space. Readers are probably familiar with the fact that while the northeastern part of the country has experienced unseasonably warm weather this winter, Colorado has had record snowfalls and the cold in California is so harsh that crops have been devastated. Meanwhile, Europe has had its fair share of strange weather as well. After a warmer-than-usual December, severe winds cancelled thousands of flights around the continent and caused power outages just before last weekend.
What does this have to do with your job, you ask? Well, in the latest bit of unwanted social engineering experimentation, hackers are taking advantage of our natural curiosity about weather disasters to spread a virus. Logically named "Storm Worm" (but more officially titled Small.damTROJAN), this virus has already infected tens of thousands of PCs worldwide, according to security experts at F-Secure. Once on your PC, Storm Worm then forwards copies of itself to contacts in your email application. Standard fare, yes, but newer variants are also using "kernel-mode rootkit techniques" to hide their activities.
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