WORMS, the enemy of PC owners and IT departments everywhere, are about to become a force for good. Beneficial worms will spread rapidly through networks and patch machines before a malicious worm can attack.
Since the first computer worm appeared in 1988, researchers have dreamed of deploying good worms to fight the bad ones. These would be programmed to invade a computer by exploiting the same weak points that bad worms use. But instead of delivering malicious software, the worms would close up the weak spot and so render the computer impervious to further attack. “We’re talking about fighting fire…
