Storm clouds gather

Like something out of an unusually febrile Michael Crichton novel, the Storm worm is upon us, quietly infecting our computers and waiting patiently until ... well, that remains to be seen.

The warning comes from Bruce Scheier Schneier, not normally considered a hysterical type, in Wired magazine. It makes chilling reading:

Not that we really have any idea how to mess with Storm. Storm has been around for almost a year, and the antivirus companies are pretty much powerless to do anything about it. Inoculating infected machines individually is simply not going to work, and I can't imagine forcing ISPs to quarantine infected hosts. A quarantine wouldn't work in any case: Storm's creators could easily design another worm -- and we know that users can't keep themselves from clicking on enticing attachments and links.

Redesigning the Microsoft Windows operating system would work, but that's ridiculous to even suggest.

Scheier Schneier also has a blog which makes for interesting reading, covering a range of security matters.

UPDATE: His name is Schneier.