Blaster was designed to exploit a known loophole in Microsoft's code that allows the worm to spread through network connections, rather than e-mail.

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Although there have been malicious bots around for some time instant messaging, security firm IMLogic believes that this is the first time someone has tried to use bot code to help spread a worm around an IM network by pretending to be a legitimate user.

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The day of the lone hacker in Des Moines trying to invent a worm to bring down the network for personal bragging rights .

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The worm was probably introduced to the Elysee network through Facebook, L'Express says.

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Under the best-case scenario, the utility would simply push a firmware update across the standard wireless network to all the affected meters, overwrite the worm, and return the meters to normal operation.

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In January 2003 the Microsoft SQL Server worm, known as Slammer, infected a private computer network at David-Besse nuclear power plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio, disabling a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours, says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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The researchers also are developing protein-network maps for other organisms, including a yeast cell and Caenorhabditis elegans, a tiny worm with some 19, 000 genes, about the same number as humans.

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