29-May-05, 11:10 AM
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Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Eau Claire,WI
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|  Web News: 'Patient zero' pinpointed in PC-worm outbreak
The computer used to kick-start a global worm outbreak in March 2004 has been traced using crucial kinks in its code.  | Quote: |  | | | | | | | | | |
The same technique could, in future, help law enforcers pinpoint those responsible for distributing viral code across the internet, researchers say.
The "Witty worm" first emerged at 0445 GMT on 20 March 2004 and infected more than 12,000 computer systems around the globe within 75 minutes. It exploited a software bug in a commercial firewall package to infect new machines, randomly generating new network address targets as it went.
Nicholas Weaver and Vern Paxson from the University of California, Berkeley, and Abhishek Kumar from the Georgia Institute of Technology, both in the US, carefully analysed the way the worm generated new targets and painstakingly retraced its steps back to the first computer - or "patient zero" - of the outbreak.
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