An assessment of the contemporary threat posed by network worm malware
Luc Tidy, Khurram Shahzad, Muhammad Aminu Ahmad, Steve Woodhead · Greenwich Academic Literature Archive (University of Greenwich) · 2014
The cost of a zero-day network worm outbreak has been estimated to be up to US$2.6 billion. Additionally zeroday network worm outbreaks have been observed that spread at a significant pace across the global Internet, with an observed infection level of more than 90 percent of vulnerable hosts within 10 minutes. The threat posed by such fast-spreading malware is therefore significant, particularly given the fact that network operator / administrator intervention is not likely to take effect within the typical epidemiological timescale of such infections. This paper presents a classification of wormable vulnerabilities, demonstrating a method to determine if a vulnerability is wormable, and presents a survey into the cause of the reduction of worm outbreaks in recent years, as well as their viability in the future. It then goes on to explore recent wormable vulnerabilities, and points out the issues with operating system security in relation to techniques used by zero-day worms.