Art Weil <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear All;-
    Maybe a little off subject----but a matter dear to our hearts.
    Are all viruses and worms created by narsty people bent on creating
mischief?
    Or do some appear almost automaticly?
    Can they be traced back to point of origin?
            Question Man

I can pretty well assure Mr. Q. that there is not likely to be any
"spontaneous generation" of worms and viruses for modern-day computers:
gone are the days that one can crash a computer just by giving it (by
design or accident) an unsolvable problem or an enlessly repeating task
like computing * exactly (Those WERE fun times......).  As to whether
they can all be traced back to their origins, this depends upon the
cleverness of their creator, and the fate of the information nessessary
to complete the trace: if the information is destroyed or corrupted
before the tracing is done, and the creative malfeasant has told nobody
of his, or its cleverness in unleashing a new computer-spread disease
upon the face of the earth, then there is no way short of ESP or
Holmsian-type deduction to trace it!!

From New Scotland with something or the other,
Ross M.