August 04, New Scientist -- Country-coded computer worms may be ahead. Jonathan
Wignall of the UK's Data and Network Security Research Council highlighted
techniques that worm creators might use to make their code spread more
effectively during a presentation at the security conference Defcon 11 in Las
Vegas, NV, on Sunday, August 3. One of these techniques could also limit a
worm's geographic range, which would turn a computer worm into an effective
weapon for information warfare, he said. Instead of attacking internet?connected
computers at random it could be used to attack a specific country. After
infecting a host computer, a worm normally scans randomly for further machines
that could be infected. But Wignall says a worm could download a prepared list
of internet rotocol (IP) addresses to attack from a single server or a group of
machines. This would prevent duplicate requests being sent to each machine, a
common cause of bottlenecking with existing worm design. Nicholas Weaver, a
computer scientist at the University of California in Berkeley says this is just
one way that a worm could, in theory, be used to target a specific country.
Another way is to avoid computers running a particular language, he says.

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994016

On Fri, 08 Aug 2003 20:47:14 GMT, "David H. Lipman"
<DLipman~nospam~@Verizon.Net> wrote:

>August 04, New Scientist -- Country-coded computer worms may be ahead. Jonathan
>Wignall of the UK's Data and Network Security Research Council highlighted
>techniques that worm creators might use to make their code spread more
>effectively during a presentation at the security conference Defcon 11 in Las
>Vegas, NV, on Sunday, August 3. One of these techniques could also limit a
>worm's geographic range, which would turn a computer worm into an effective
>weapon for information warfare, he said. Instead of attacking internet?connected
>computers at random it could be used to attack a specific country. After
>infecting a host computer, a worm normally scans randomly for further machines
>that could be infected. But Wignall says a worm could download a prepared list
>of internet rotocol (IP) addresses to attack from a single server or a group of
>machines. This would prevent duplicate requests being sent to each machine, a
>common cause of bottlenecking with existing worm design. Nicholas Weaver, a
>computer scientist at the University of California in Berkeley says this is just
>one way that a worm could, in theory, be used to target a specific country.
>Another way is to avoid computers running a particular language, he says.
>
>Source: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994016

<yawn> Seems awfully obvious, doesn't it?

Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

Maybe to some, but not to all.

Dave

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news(E-Mail Removed)...
| On Fri, 08 Aug 2003 20:47:14 GMT, "David H. Lipman"
| <DLipman~nospam~@Verizon.Net> wrote:
|
| >August 04, New Scientist -- Country-coded computer worms may be ahead. Jonathan
| >Wignall of the UK's Data and Network Security Research Council highlighted
| >techniques that worm creators might use to make their code spread more
| >effectively during a presentation at the security conference Defcon 11 in Las
| >Vegas, NV, on Sunday, August 3. One of these techniques could also limit a
| >worm's geographic range, which would turn a computer worm into an effective
| >weapon for information warfare, he said. Instead of attacking internet?connected
| >computers at random it could be used to attack a specific country. After
| >infecting a host computer, a worm normally scans randomly for further machines
| >that could be infected. But Wignall says a worm could download a prepared list
| >of internet rotocol (IP) addresses to attack from a single server or a group of
| >machines. This would prevent duplicate requests being sent to each machine, a
| >common cause of bottlenecking with existing worm design. Nicholas Weaver, a
| >computer scientist at the University of California in Berkeley says this is just
| >one way that a worm could, in theory, be used to target a specific country.
| >Another way is to avoid computers running a particular language, he says.
| >
| >Source: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994016
|
| <yawn> Seems awfully obvious, doesn't it?
|
| Art
| http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg