User Perceptions and Acceptance of Benevolent Worms -- A Matter of Fear?

Worms and other forms of malware have been considered by IT Security firms and large companies for many years as one of the leading threats to the integrity of their data and security. However, several researchers over recent years have been working on creating worms which, instead of causing harm to machines which they infect, or the networks on which the machines reside, actually aid the network and systems administrators. Several uses of these worms have been proposed by these researchers, including, but not limited to, rapid remote patching of machines, network and system administration through use of their unique discovery and propagation methods, actively hunting, and defending against, other forms of malware such as "malevolent" worms, viruses, spyware, as well as increasing reliable communication of nodes in distributed computing. However, there has been no hint of commercial adoption of these worms, which one researcher has described as being due to a fear factor'. This paper concentrates on assessing and delivering the findings of user attitudes towards these worms in an attempt to find out how users feel about these worms, and to try and define and overcome the factors which might contribute to the fear factor'.