Blaster worm could have infected over 8 million PCs

[Julio Franco]

A new report from Microsoft itself suggests that no less than 8 million PCs were infected by the "MSBlast" worm since last August. This is an impressive number that far outpaces previous estimates on how broad was the infection around the globe.

The latest data comes from the software giant's ability to track the usage of an online tool that its engineers created to clean systems infected with the worm. Since the January release of the tool, more than 16 million of the systems that connected to Microsoft's Windows Update service were found to be infected with MSBlast and were offered a patch and the use of the disinfecting tool, the software giant told CNET News.com. During the same period, about 8 million systems actually called on Update to patch them and prevent reinfection and used the special tool to remove the worm.

 

[acidosmosis]

I would be willing to bet that the statistics are wrong in this sense; not every PC that had the NT Authority issue had Blaster. These are two seperate things which people confuse as one a lot. 8 million computers affected by the RPC exploit yes, infected with Blaster -- highly doubt it.

I worked for an ISP at the time that it hit real hard and was the sole provider of tech support for 500 customers from 9am-11pm, 7 days a week. I got a LOT of calls about this, so many that it became a pretty big headache to deal with for $9/hour.

 

[StormBringer]

Personally, I'd have thought that would be a much larger number. We still see occasional Blaster posts here at TS forums. I still see a few cases a week on clients' machines.

 

[Per Hansson]

StormBringer; indeed, just looking at my firewall log, on dialup!

I see lots of blaster worms still flying by....