Among the other possible uses of such inter-worm communication might be able to build a spam-spewing collection so large that spammers could send just a few messages from each compromised mail server, doing an end-around administrators' tactics of watching for high spikes in mail volume or other anomalies.
Worm-to-worm communication could also be used to raise the denial-of-service (DoS) attack ante. DoS attacks, which have been the hallmark of such worms as MyDoom and Netsky, could become more aggressive, more frequent, and be used for political and economic gain.
"This was really defined by MyDoom taking on SCO's site, and other worms targeting Microsoft or the RIAA," said Chasin. "Those examples will only become more common."
Although P2P-based worms are often originally spread by e-mail -- still a very effective propagation technique, Chasin said -- new avenues such as insecure wireless access points are what worries him most.
There are already tools which let spammers conduct "drive-by spamming," where a car and a laptop are used to cruise for unprotected access points, and spam is shunted through those APs to the general Internet. "Worm writers could easily take that and leverage APs as insertion points for malicious code," said Chasin, resulting in "drive-by worming" using a mobile "worm truck."
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
