This article is crazy. It’s about how people are theorizing a huge crippling worm attack on the internet on 9/11/03. There are some stunningly cool/scary parts of this idea:

“The SuperWorm would combine the capabilities of recent worms/viruses. This hi-tech worm could lever itself into becoming a ‘WormNet’ inside the existing Internet, with worms on individual infected computers sending encrypted communications to each other. Worms could exchange latest worm-code updates and get lists of new attack targets. These features would even enable them to morph into new worm generations.

Once established, the SuperWorm would be a permanent presence on the Internet. It could be scaled up and down in intensity or retargeted by its human controller(s). It could also be used to untracably broadcast to the world audience on the Internet…

Secreted on hundreds of thousands of computers, WormNet would become an intractably persistent presence –piggybacking on existing Internet communications protocols…

Or maybe it’s time to release our own Defender.A worm which could invasively close down the relevant “holes” in Internet security. A defensive worm could use standard intrusion tactics for benign result.

Wow! That’s really exciting to me! Its like fucking Godzilla vs. Mothra or something! Incredible! Its just like that idea that Richard Dawkins talks about in that Viruses of the mind thing, where he talks about the internet and operating systems being constructed in large part out of positive and negative worms operating in a kind of ecosystem. Really damn interesting. I really like this idea actually. In one way, I kind of hope they succeed, and force people to rethink how the internet works - maybe force its next phase of evolution.