Thursday, June 24, 2004

Could Search Sites Spawn Worms?

Could Search Sites Spawn Worms? Could Search Sites Spawn Worms? Security firm warns that search engine data is a treasure trove for worms seeking vulnerable systems. Joel Strauch, special to PC World Thursday, June 24, 2004 Worm attacks are bad enough by themselves, but some experts warn of an even more devastating variation: one that strikes at the application level instead of targeting network infrastructure, and spreads to Web sites through Web-based search engines. Essentially, a smart worm could crawl into the data gathered by a search engine to identify the most vulnerable sites and target them, say some security experts and analysts. List of Victims "Search engines basically crawl Web sites and all their links, and categorize them,"