Coverage of 'Race to Zero' has focussed attention, at least for a short while, on the very real problem that polymorphism poses for those who are trying to filter out all the different types of malware that can arrive on a user's system.
Web-based attacks can take many forms, with effects ranging from mild inconvenience when a Web site no longer loads properly (such as the recent redirection of Barack Obama's Web site to Hillary Clinton's) to complete compromise of the user's system.
When news of their planned attacks against CNN's website was published last week, the Chinese hacking group 'Revenge of the Flame' postponed their attack, due to there being too much public awareness of their plans. Since that news was made public, and under the increasing attention of the global media, it seems that it has all become too much for 'Revenge of the Flame' and they have announced their disbandment.
Chinese hackers appear to be readying for an attack on the West scheduled for April 19. It appears the basis of the attack is based on the recent, and very public, pro Tibet coverage in Western media organizations.
In 1996 it was Aleph One's astounding paper, [[xref:http://reactor-core.org/stack-smashing.html |"Smashing the Stack for fun and Profit"|new]] that introduced a generation of Information Security researchers, and eventually the world at large, to the inherent exploitability of buffer overflows and introduced techniques that would form the basis of proving that a vulnerability was exploitable (as well as the basis of any number of exploits themselves).
Many people fear them, but most hackers are no more than simple point and click operators (the basic script kiddie) that are incapable of anything but using tools created by others.