Imagine a worm that replicates with its choice of SMTP, Instant Messaging, IRC or whatever… coordinates attacks with bretheren infesting other machines… and mutates forever to avoid detection. Such a worm could never be stopped until every single victim on planet Earth was disinfected.

No need to imagine it. You’ll be face-to-face soon.

Phatbot’s the prototype, courtesy… inadvertantly… of AOL’s NullSoft team, whose Waste peer-to-peer source code enabled the streets in 2003. While today’s Phatbots can’t talk with each other… tomorrow’s will.

You need to get moving today. Set email gateways to identify suspicious senders… and disable potentially dangerous contents in messages, includings scripts and sneaky HTML forms. Delete as many types of attachments as upper management can stand. Then scan the leftovers for viruses. Keep up-to-date firewalls and virus scanning on all servers and pcs. And for heavens sake, keep those patches current… especially Microsoft patches… On every server and pc you can reach.

The model? Distributed Security. If one layer doesn’t catch it, another one will.

It’s the only way you have a chance against berserkers with the luxury of choosing the time, the place and the weapon.