The only good worm is a dead worm
Friday, 29 August 2003 07:04 EST



In the wake of the Blaster attack earlier this month, a "do-gooder" worm Nachi emerged uninvited to assume patch installation duties across embattled networks. After infecting vulnerable Windows 2000 or Window XP machines, Nachi searches for and removes the Blaster worm file, Msblast.exe, and attempts to download and install a Windows software patch from Microsoft that closed the security hole used by the worm.

Nachi is not the first "good worm" to emerge; neither will it be the last. John DeRiso from Trend Micro, Global Marketing Asian Region, noted that during the Code Red outbreak in 2001, a worm called Code Green attempted to prevent web servers from being infected. Earlier in 2001, the so-called Cheese worm tried to repair Linux systems infected by the Li0n worm.

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