'Good' Worm Fixes Infected Computers
A new Internet worm emerged today that is designed to seek out and fix any computer that remains vulnerable to "Blaster," the worm that attacked more than 500,000 computers worldwide last week.
The new worm scours the Internet for computers already infected with Blaster and deletes the "bad" worm, according to two anti-virus software vendors. The worm then fixes the computers with one of eight software patches developed by Microsoft Corp, and it uses infected computers as a base for searching the Internet for other vulnerable systems. Blaster and the new worm both target vulnerabilities in recent versions of Windows XP (news - web sites), Windows 2000 (news - web sites) and Windows NT 4.0.
Even though the new worm is "good," it can cause plenty of trouble for computer users, said Oliver Friedrichs, senior manager at Symantec Security Response, an Internet security company based in Cupertino, Calif.
Once it infects a computer, it is programmed to remain there until Jan. 1, 2004, all the while scanning the Internet for other computers to infect. That activity saps an infected computer's processing power and Internet connection speed, Friedrichs said.
