The good news: the popular Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks think they can get rid of mischief-making virus Fizzer. The bad news: It might make them cybercriminals, says CNET.com reported May 16.
IRC administrators think they can get rid of Fizzer by manipulating the e-mail-conducting worm, but QuakeNet security team member Daniel Ferguson told CNET that could be illegal – though several IRC operators were still likely to try shutting down the viruses on PCs connected to IRC networks.
"You can't really blame them," Ferguson told the high-tech news site. "When there is nothing else (they) can do to solve a problem like this, then they are left with little choice. The worms (and) trojans not only use their bandwidth, costing them money, but are a danger to the general IRC and Internet infrastructure."
Fizzer has been a migraine for IRC since May 12, when it turned up spreading via e-mail and file-swapping networks and connecting to random chat networks awaiting commands. Fizzer has also been found to go to specific GeoCities Web address daily to update itself with any code found there, CNET.com said. That moved one IRC operator to reserve the address and post a program that might cause Fizzer to uninstall itself.
Initial tests found that idea wasn't working – and could be illegal, CNET.com said, under "a technical reading illegal under a technical reading of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," as Stanford Law Center for Internet and Society clinical director Jennifer Granick told CNET."I think that it definitely falls afoul of that statute," she said. "But I don't think it will be something that will be pursued, because that statute is over broad." But don't ask yet if any IRC bid to crack or hack Fizzer out of existence would be prosecuted. A spokesman for the Justice Department's computer crime section refused comment when reached by CNET. Granick, however, told CNET that if shutting the worm down with commands that could crash it didn't affect the victim's computer in any other way, then doing it would be legal.
