Executive Summary Worms

Worms are one of the biggest threats within the computer industry today. Worms affect the usefulness of computer networks and systems all over the world. A worm is malicious software that creeps its way into a system, infects the system or does what it was there to do and then propels itself onward to another system that is linked to the same network. In other cases a worm may have an executable file built in that causes it to utilize one of the major e-mail software programs to replicate itself to other computer workstations using e-mail.

Worms are one of the hardest vulnerabilities to combat within a network. The reason they are so hard to combat is because they are designed to enter a system undetected, execute their purpose and leave before they can be traced or detected. Usually after they are noticed they have long gone to another system. The damage the worm causes is usually what triggers the alert. Therefore the damage is already done. At this point an administrator would have to jump directly to the reaction and recovery phases.