Computer worms date back to the late 1980s. A student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by the name of Robert Morris Jr. was implementing a way to measure the size of the internet. In his attempt, he inadvertently created this first computer worm ever witnessed.
Morris had a major bug in his programming that led to this worm copying itself thousands of times in the computer. This caused, as you would imagine, some dire issues for lots of terminals around the U.S. Morris’ worm was given the name “The Great Worm” for how tragic the outcome was and also for the windows it opened up for future hackers.
Hackers became aware of this new way to cause harm to a target computer or network. They understood that a worm can manipulate data to cause it to duplicate itself hundreds if not thousands times over. This causes computers to become unresponsive because its memory is being flooded by bad data. And because a worm doesn’t need a primary host it’s hard to track where the worm is coming from.
Attachments in email spam are the most common way to contract a worm. Sasser Worms and Blaster Worms seem to be the worms that people tend to get. A lot of people tend to be ignorant of the fact that hackers have intent of doing what they can to get their worm onto your computer. People have to be aware that there is a lot of malware on the internet and you have to keep an eye out for them.
There are things that a computer user should do regularly to help avoid getting a computer worm. One would be to update your operating system on a regular basis. Another thing would be to manage your spam filters on what ever mail client you are using. The best technique, however, would be to have common sense that they exist and are, in fact, in email spam and in bad websites.