Coding with Jesse

Patching Worm

August 29th, 2005

If someone were to write a worm that went around the Internet, eliminating the vulnerability of the computers it passes through, is that immoral? Is it illegal? Since the worm is doing no damage (unless you consider patching a hole to be damaging somehow), I wonder what the implications would be. What would people say if Microsoft released a patching-worm before someone released a damaging one?