Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

Impediments to Worm Spread

Now that we've seen the typical components used to build a worm, let's think through the major hurdles that worms face as they spread and the strategies used to get around such obstacles. Although it might at first seem like an evil exercise to contemplate such things, humor me for a minute or two. By understanding the difficulties that worms face in spreading, we might be able to get a better feel for how worms could evolve in the future and, more important, how we could defend against some of these new trends.

Diversity of Target Environment

One of the biggest impediments to a worm's voracious spread is its reliance on the victim machine's environment. Although we'd like to think that worms are slowed down by our ...