Don,
Part of me is a little surprised already. I figured by now, someone would have started writing code, for the sole purpose of cleaning up boxes. We've seen some of it with the bots starting to attack each other, but I figured there would be enough altruistic hackers out there to build a nice system.
I think the bigger problem is, people want money not good feelings.
White worms have been discussed at great length, I've been a part of some of those heated discussions. What it boils down to is access. By creating a "white worm", you are accessing and changing a system you do not have permission to do so. The debate started long ago with Code Red (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Red_%28computer_worm%29) and the theoretical Code Green worm.
The biggest one that sticks out in my mind is Welchia (aka Nachi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welchia), which exploited Microsoft security flaws in order to patch them. In turn forcing reboots.
Other worms have similar concepts, but mainly used to closing the backdoor once they get in, like Conficker and Slammer. There are also some macro viruses which have really advanced this idea for EVIL.
Thanks to my co-worker for collaboration on this.
GCIH - GIAC Certified Incident Handler : Passed my GCIH
