Can't believe they designed a logo especially for this worm (and gave a fancy name). There's apparently a marketing campaign in vulnerability discoveries too.
Yes. This absolutely fucking sickens me. It instantly gives news agencies an excuse to pick up every little hole and scare all the mortals into submission.
Security has become a marketing and media circus now which in turn desensitizes people to real concerns and rational thought.
I do see your point, however sometimes it is a good thing to let everyone know about it, so they're able to do something about it.
For example, my manager even heard about "shell shock" and prompted me to do something about it. Although, it was over a week after the outbreak, and we'd already established we weren't vulnerable (applied the patch anyway) - but even so!
By labeling a bug with a catchy name it enables conversation. If there is one thing the world of security needs it more conversation. More talk == more $$$.
At least Heartbleed and Shellshock made sense. Sandworm is just trying to play up fear for a boring not-really-remote vuln. And, the vulnerability is not a worm. It's shitty marketing.
In defense of "branding" vulnerabilities ... Heartbleed was the first instance where "normal" people were asking me if I had heard about it and if it effected me/my business.
Attribution and PR aside, branding these helps educate the public and give them something tangible to call it/discuss.
And it really makes life easier when you have to explain downtime to your clients, who are often "normal people" and won't understand what SSL is but will have seen Heartbleed on the news and will probably remember it when you say the name. (I'm not sure Shellshock got quite the same coverage, but maybe I'm wrong there.)
It looks like a sandworm from the computer games and shitty [1] film adaption of the Dune series by Frank Herbert [2].
[1] The games were great, if unrelated to the story. The film is ridiculous and uses the books merely as backdrop.
[2] Pedantic I know, but the books had pictures on the covers that showed exactly what a sandworm should look like – e.g. visible crystal teeth of a size that could be made into a dagger (a crysknife) and a hot furnace behind – not three weird flaps around a dark mouth.
Yeah, I think they do this because if they can make a catchy name and logo, it becomes the focus of the media and I think they must pull in like a million hits or more to these articles. That is valuable if you have something to sell.
I think that soon there will be multiple names for each new vulerability with multiple logo-ed/brand-ed info pages. And then this trend will start to die out.
But for now, you should be worried about the latest Vulnerability[tm].