Attack of the Profit-Killer Worms

Internet worms are costing Broadband ISPs a fortune - as much as $370m worldwide in 2004. Customers foot some of the bill through higher subscription charges, but most is soaked up by their. On any given day, around five per cent of the home customers of a typical ISP will be infected by some kind of worm, according to a new study by Sandvine, an Internet traffic management firm. This creates a huge volume of malicious traffic, especially in North America where ISPs will haemorrhage $245m this year because of virus infections (compared to an estimated $160m in 2003).

Why is there so much rubbish on the Net?
Most ISP networks contain varying degrees of latent worm activity and experience daily denial of service (DoS) attacks, the study found. Traffic generated by the six-month old Nachi worm and Trojan infections created the biggest problems.

On any given day, between two and 12 per cent of all Internet traffic moving across ISP networks is malicious. Even on well-run networks with dedicated security departments, malicious traffic makes an average of five per cent of all data.

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