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Computer-science experts have a phrase for this type of fast-spreading epidemic, 'a Warhol worm' in honour of Andy Warhol's prediction that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. 'In computer terms, 15 minutes is a really long time,' says Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, who coined the Warhol term. 'The worm moves faster than humans can respond.' He suspects that even more damaging worms are on the way. All a worm writer needs to do is find a significant new flaw in a Microsoft product, then write some code that exploits it. Even Microsoft admits that there are flaws the company doesn't yet know about.
Virus writers are especially hostile toward Microsoft, the perennial whipping boy of the geek world. From their (somewhat self-serving) point of view, Microsoft is to blame for the worm epidemic, because the company frequently leaves flaws in its products that allow malware to spread. Microsoft markets its products to less expert computer users, cultivating the sort of gullible victims who click on disguised virus attachments.
But it is Microsoft's success that really makes it such an attractive target: since more than 90 per cent of desktop computers run Windows, worm writers target Microsoft in order to hit the largest possible number of victims. (By relying so exclusively on Microsoft products, virus authors say, we have created a digital monoculture, a dangerous thinning of the internet's gene pool.) Microsoft is now so angry that it has launched a counterattack. Last autumn, it set up a $5 million fund to pay for information leading to the capture of writers who target Windows machines. So far, it has announced $250,000 bounties for the creators of Blaster, Sobig.F and Mydoom.B.