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Cyber Secure Institute: Conficker outbreak could cost $9.1 bn

Thursday, April 23, 2009

A major outbreak of the Conficker worm could cost the U.S. economy $9.1 billion to clean up, according to the Cyber Secure Institute (CSI), a Washington, DC advocacy and research organization launched in December.

The organization said it came up with the figure based on studies on the average cost of similar past attacks and estimates of how many PCs have been infected by the Conficker worm to date.

"Even using the single, outlying source that suggests a much more limited scope of infection (fewer than 200,000) - vastly less than all other sources suggest - the cost of this virus is still roughly $200 million," CSI said.

In a letter to Congress in March, CSI requested that the committee in charge of cybersecurity consider "advancing legislation that would put in place baseline cybersecurity performance standards to drive the adoption of inherently secure technologies."

"If anything, Conficker has demonstrated the inadequacy of today’s cybersecurity, in particular relying upon cybersecurity add-ons like firewalls, anti-virus programs, and the like," the group said in a release this week.

The organization said on its website that its goal is to become the de facto independent standard-setting body with the goal of raising cybersecurity standards.