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Microsoft wants to worm its way into your PC


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#1 Nvyseal

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Posted 15 February 2008 - 04:00 PM

images/news/microsoft.jpgMicrosoft is taking a leaf out of the virus writers' handbook, hoping to use friendly "worms" to distribute software patches surreptitiously.

Like the malicious worms that spread from computer to computer by self-replicating and automatically seeking out new computers to infect, the friendly worms will be used to distribute updates to users without forcing them to download anything from a central server.

The research is being spearheaded by a team from Microsoft Research in Britain, and opens up the possibility of worm races between virus writers and the software companies to see who can reach vulnerable machines faster.

Unlike malicious worms seek to exploit vulnerabilities in operating systems, the friendly worms would seek to patch those vulnerabilities before the computer is attacked.

Milan Vojnovic, who is part of the research team, told New Scientist his friendly worms would be more efficient than malicious worms because they were smarter at seeking out vulnerable, unpatched machines. They could then "infect" a network of computers using the smallest number of probes.

Vojnovic said his worms were capable of learning from past experience.

The worm starts by randomly probing for an uninfected host and then targets other computers on the same network. If it fails to find a cluster of uninfected hosts it changes its strategy in order to maximise the number of computers it can patch.

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#2 TheBearLT

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Posted 15 February 2008 - 05:12 PM

Honestly ? Without thinking about the possible bad consequences ?

This is a good idea :christo:



Posted Image
an example of a friendly "worm"..............

Edited by TheBearLT, 15 February 2008 - 06:05 PM.


#3 m.oreilly

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Posted 15 February 2008 - 05:50 PM

haha, nice one, tbear! :christo:

#4 Camaro

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Posted 15 February 2008 - 06:20 PM

personally I would not trust any worm regardless of its intent, seriously whats to say that it wont harm things down the road, or the ideal of the programmer change and the "good" worm turns bad.

Take this for example, this worm worms its way through all computers and then at that point its doing things inside your computer, sending things to whoever, maybe someone pays to get info for advertising purposes and then the worm starts broadcasting your info out.
Or maybe it becomes a pay as you go service to keep your computer up to date?

Edited by Camaro, 15 February 2008 - 06:23 PM.


#5 TheBearLT

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Posted 15 February 2008 - 06:32 PM

Hey Camaro, fully agreed with you.. in fact I was making the same point.

I bet reversed engineering would be used here, and lots of "Microsoft Certified" exploits one day will infect thousands of computers..




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