Malicious worm that talks back

A worm that reassures you that it is not infectious has impressed technology consultant Bill Thompson.

Worms and viruses will use any available channel to spread, as recipients of infected email attachments, visitors to websites loaded with malicious software and users of peer-to-peer networks can all testify.

Instant messaging networks are not immune, since most allow users to exchange files.

Now it seems that the latest worm to infect AOL's instant messaging community, Aim, actually chats with the users it is targeting in order to persuade them to download and run an infected file.