Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

Chapter 3. Worms

A little, wretched, despicable creature; a worm…

—Jonathan Edwards, The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners, 1734

So, you're just sitting there working on your computer, innocently surfing the Web. Then, all of a sudden, without warning… whooomph! You receive a flurry of 50 e-mails from coworkers pledging their undying love to you. As you smile whimsically at the thought of your newfound attractiveness, you realize that every single one of these messages beckons you to read an enclosed attachment and respond immediately to their amorous advances. At the same time, your personal firewall goes berserk, detecting strangely formed Web requests sent to your laptop. You start to mumble, “But I'm not running a Web server on ...