Witty worm proves patching 'not viable'

Companies could not apply patches in time to prevent the Witty worm spreading, according to a report from US academics. The Witty worm first hit computers known to be vulnerable and emerged so quickly that most companies had no time to apply a patch, according a recent report by US-based academics. The worm started spreading around the Internet last week, less than 48 hours after the first public description of the flaw was released. That's the fastest development to date of a worm from a vulnerability, according to a report published late last week by the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) and the University of California at San Diego.

"The fact that all victims were compromised via their firewall software the day after a vulnerability in that software was publicised indicates that the security model in which end users apply patches to plug security holes is not viable," the report stated.

Witty took advantage of a flaw in Internet Security Systems software security products such as RealSecure and BlackIce. While ISS has said that only 2 percent of its users were vulnerable to the worm, as many as 12,000 computers may have been infected in less than an hour, according to the report.

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