[myNetWords.com] : Worm

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What does it mean ?

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Worm

Updated : Thursday 21 April 2011

"I’ve been attacked by a worm": the first time a friend said that to me, my shocked reaction was that worm infestations are something you should perhaps keep to yourself. I had of course missed the point – this worm was a virtual parasite. According to Wikipedia, a worm is a programme spread by email that exploits the gaps in messaging systems. You receive a message accompanied by a dangerous file attachment, which starts up and propagates as soon as you open it, duplicating itself to all the contacts in your email address book and causing considerable havoc. The worm is the most widespread form of malware currently found.

Using a pirated email address, the hacker takes control of the target computer by infiltrating a Trojan horse, usually an attachment. When this is opened, the “spy” penetrates the workstation and everyone corresponding with it will be infiltrated in their turn. This is a potentially serious hazard for government departments: in the UK, the intelligence centre GCHQ reports that 20,000 malicious emails appear on government computers every month, 1,000 of them specifically targeted to damage them.

Worms feed off our narcissistic weaknesses and desires. The most famous one, "I love you", only managed to infect more than 3 million computers because so many people were so desperate to hear they were loved! Pirates know perfectly well that their victims are often partly to blame: we so much want to believe we’ve won the lottery, or inherited money from an unknown relative, that we are seriously vulnerable. And people working in government ministries are no exception, alas. They, too, feel unloved!

Internet security experts are very strict in their advice: just don’t download the infected files in the first place! Easier said than done, as it means never opening anything sent by one of our contacts unless we can be sure that person actually did send the email. Which could induce paranoia on a massive scale and bring ordinary professional exchanges of email to a grinding halt.

Maybe we should be asking our contacts for a password each time they send an email, to verify their identity. Or we could go back to where we started, and use good old snail mail. It’s probably faster and more secure.