Slammer - Fastest Spreading Worm Ever?

Quick, what’s the fastest-spreading Internet worm of all time ? If you think it’s Klez or Code Red, you’re incorrect according to a team of network security experts in California. The team, comprised of computer scientists from the University of California at San Diego, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the University of California at Berkeley, Silicon Defense, and the nonprofit International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, determined that the Sapphire/Slammer worm of a couple of weeks ago was the fastest-spreading Internet worm ever. The worm made headlines for bringing Internet service to a crawl in several areas, with South Korea taking the hardest hit.

A white paper produced by the team, claims that Sapphire doubled its numbers every 8.5 seconds during the first minute of its attack. Within 10 minutes of debuting on 25 January, the worm was observed to have infected more than 75,000 hosts, according to the researchers.

"The Sapphire/Slammer worm represents a major new threat in computer worm technology, demonstrating that lightning-fast computer worms are not just a theoretical threat, but a reality," said Stuart Staniford, president and founder of Silicon Defense. "Although this particular computer worm did not carry a malicious payload, it did a lot of harm by spreading so aggressively and blocking networks."

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