A hacker who claims he was behind a fast-spreading e-mail worm that crippled corporate networks last week said that the worm was designed, in part, as a propaganda tool.
The hacker, known as Iraq Resistance, responded to inquiries sent to an e-mail address associated with the "Here you have" worm, which during a brief period early Thursday accounted for about 10 percent of the spam on the Internet. He (or she) revealed no details about his identity, but said, "The creation of this is just a tool to reach my voice to people maybe... or maybe other things."
He said he had not expected the worm to spread as broadly as it had, and noted that he could have done much more damage to victims. "I could smash all those infected but I wouldn't," said the hacker. "I hope all people understand that I am not negative person!" In other parts of the message, he was critical of the U.S. war in Iraq.
On Sunday, Iraq Resistance posted a video echoing these sentiments and complaining, through a computer-generated voice, that his actions were not as bad as those of Terry Jones. Jones is the pastor at a small Florida church who received worldwide attention this week for threatening to burn copies of the Koran.
Security experts agree that the worm could have caused more damage. However, it did include some very malicious components, such as password logging software and a backdoor program that could have been used to allow its creator to control infected machines. But because the software was not terribly sophisticated, it was quickly shut down as Web servers that it used to infect machines and issue new commands were taken offline last week.
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This is a fortaste of our future. This is scary.
John H. Armwood
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