War of worms turns into war of words

The authors of the MyDoom, Bagle and Netsky worms have been insulting each other by inserting lines of text into their malware - while keeping one step ahead of antivirus companies. Security researchers have discovered that the authors of MyDoom and Bagle are exchanging insults with the author of Netsky using text that is hidden inside the virus's code. Since Friday, more than 10 variants of the Netsky, Bagle and MyDoom worms have been discovered. Mutants spreading in the past 24 hours have contained messages that indicate the authors of MyDoom and Bagle have teamed up against Netsky's author, antivirus experts said.

Finnish security company F-Secure on Tuesday reported that Bagle.J contained a line of text that said: "Hey, NetSky, f*ck off you b*tch, don't ruine our bussiness, wanna start a war?"

Mydoom.G, which was released on the same day, also contained a message to Netsky's author: "To netsky's creator(s): imho, skynet is a decentralised peer-to-peer neural network. we have seen P2P in Slapper in Sinit only. they may be called skynets, but not your shitty app."

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