RE: The 'good worm' from HP

[Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>]

Todd Towles wrote:

> Yeah I remember first hearing about that in the Patch Management
> circles. Does sounds like a good idea. Anyone that has been over patch
> managemtn can tell you that patches break stuff. Now software will
> automatically break software with software patches. =) Interesting. 

And, aside from the "Are 'Good' Viruses Still a Bad Idea?" issues, some 
historical precedent suggests that this a hard set of problems to fix.  
In the earliest (?) academic/commercial research into worm-like 
behaviour, where the intention was purely to better utilize the 
resouirces of the individual machines in a network, to perform 
housekeeping tasks on said machines out of hours and so on, things went 
awry and the project was abandoned.  IIRC, that work was by Shoch & 
Hupp at XEROX PARC in the early 80's and is widely cited in some 
circles...


-- 
Nick FitzGerald
Computer Virus Consulting Ltd.
Ph/FAX: +64 3 3529854

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