It depends on the type of computer worm and the desires of its creator. It is believed Stuxnet was a targeted cyber attack designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear weapon production. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems which are commonly used by power utilities, water supply services, sewerage plants and other industrial environments. Stuxnet, one of the most notorious computer worms, spread through infected USBs. This type of malware can be used in conjunction with social engineering, like phishing or spear phishing, to greatly increase the probability of successful infection.īefore widespread use of computer networks, worms spread through infected external hard drives, CDs, floppy diskettes and USBs. The messages contain a malicious email attachment that infects the new system when the recipient opens it. Email worms create and send outbound emails to all addresses in a user's contacts. It would then look for new victims by sending SMBv1 requests, responders would be infected by the self-replicating malware.Īnother common method are email worms.
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Once the target system was infected, the worm infection would install a computer program that encrypted the user's files and requested ransom.
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WannaCry targeted versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems that used Server Message Block (SMBv1), an outdated resource sharing protocol. This mistake turned a potentially harmless intellectual exercise into a denial-of-service attack and caused its creator Robert Morris to be the first person convicted under the United States' 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.Ī more recent example is the WannaCry ransomware cryptworm, which many suspect is the work of North Korean cybercriminals.
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However, the malicious code could infected a machine multiple times and each additional process would slow it down, eventually to the point of being unusable.
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At its height, the Morris Worm was running on nearly 10 percent of all internet-enabled computers at the time. It spread by exploiting known vulnerabilities, like those that would now be listed on CVE, in Unix sendmail finger, rsh/rexec, as well as weak passwords. The Morris worm was one of the first internet worms and was written to highlight security flaws rather than cause damage. How Do Computer Worms Spread?Ĭomputer worms often rely on actions of and exploitation of security vulnerabilities in networking protocols, a computer's operating system or backdoor to propage without the user's knowledge.Īn early example is the Morris worm. In contrast, worms are self-replicating and require no human intervention to spread once started. It is mutating program that injects malicious code into existing applications and uses their functionality or user action to spread. The term virus is often used as a generic, catch-all, reference to any type of malware, technically this is incorrect.Ī virus, like its biological counterpart, does not reproduce or spread on its own.
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What is the Difference Between a Virus and a Worm? Along with computing resources, networks can become congested by traffic associated with worm propagation.
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Worms can often go unnoticed until their uncontrolled replication process consumes system resources, halting or slowing the infected computer.
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A computer worm is a type of malicious software that self-replicates, infecting other computers while remaining active on infected systems.