Overview of Recent Internet Worm Activity

Since early in it's inception, the Internet has been plagued by mobile
malicious code such as worms. Several worms, such as Sapphire, Nimda, Code
Red, and the Morris Worm, have grown so large that they have affecting
significant portions of the Internet. Because of this, they represent a
threat to the continued operation of the network as a whole, affected
routing and latency for every network. Recent developments in this threat
have included the widespread adoption of the worm as a mechanism to spread
spam and DDoS toolkits, further increasing this threat. All of this has
created a significant amount of interest in the security research
community. Recent advances have attempted to address this problem through
a variety of mechanisms, including behavioral based detection mechanisms
and responsible behavior enforcement mechanisms. These show promise as a
means of preventing the widespread impact of many future worms.

Dr Jose Nazario earned a Ph.D. in Biochemisty at Case Western Reserve
University and since then has worked for Arbor Networks in Ann Arbor, MI.
He has presented his research on worms and DDoS events at several major
venues, and has recently published a book on Internet worms.