Interesting development in the fight against the threat of computer viruses and their ilk sees worm pitted against worm. The metaphor of living things to describe these programs seems more pertinent than ever.
“The AntiMSBlaster worm arrives the same way that MSBlaster did, through a network connection instead of as an e-mail attachment. It only affects Windows 2000 and Windows XP computers, and possibly Windows 2003 servers, that have not been patched for the RPC DCOM buffer overflow security flaw.” Wired
As a solution AntiBlaster was criticised for the damaging internet traffic its deployment created. Beyond that, the difference between AntiBlaster and what Microsoft is considering seems to be a fine one.
For some reason I’m reminded of the joke among web developers regarding the relative economy of writing a virus to disable installations of Netscape 4.
The washington post link, this article once contained, has since broken so I have removed it. As far as I can remember the article said something about a hypothetical Microsoft patch or whatever that propagated itself. But don’t quote me on it…
Oliver Boermans works as an interactive media designer in Adelaide, South Australia. This is his web interface — a place for Ollie to rant, reflect and share. Read more about Ollie