The Nimda Worm: An Overview

On September 18, 2001, a new fast-spreading worm appeared on the Internet, named 'Nimda'. Its lifecycle disrupted the confidentiality integrity and availability of different resources throughout the Internet. Despite being new Nimda exploited several well-known and correctable vulnerabilities on Microsoft Windows 9x ME NT and 2000 systems. Properly closing these vulnerabilities in advance could have significantly slowed its spread. The goal of this paper is to review how Nimda propagates focus on the initial vulnerabilities it exploits to enter an organization and what preparations could have been done to prevent exploitation in the first place.