Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense

Chapter 16. Worms

Â	All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.	Â
Â	--John Locke (1632–1704), British philosopher

Introduction

The year 2001 should be named The Year of the Worm—the computer worm. Despite its name, a computer worm is much like a replicating, resource-starving virus that can bring down even the largest of computer systems. As defined by www.webopedia.com, a worm is:

• A program or algorithm that replicates itself over a computer network and usually performs malicious actions, such as using up the computer's resources and possibly shutting the system down. Also see virus.

Ever since Robert Tappan Morris unleashed the first worm on the Internet in 1988, the cyberworld ...