Another case of misplaced blame:

FBI to Arrest Teen in Internet Attack (washingtonpost.com): "The FBI has identified a teenager as the author of a damaging virus-like infection unleashed on the Internet and plans to arrest him early Friday, a U.S. official confirmed Thursday." ... All the Blaster variants took advantage of a flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s flagship Windows software. Government and industry experts had anticipated such an outbreak since July 16, when Microsoft acknowledged the flaw, which affects Windows technology used to share data files across computer networks.

The news media have a habit of feeding the public's perception that viri and worms are sinister threats cooked up by evil geniuses. A computer virus can do just about anything in the minds of many computer users. And the government responds by furiously pursuing the wicked geniuses who device mind-bogglingly complex plots to bring society to its knees. The facts, though, are often much less sinister: as is often the case, a kid wrote the MS Blaster worm. It was an easy little program taking advantage of a gaping whole in MS Windows. The kid's action was not much worse than a petty prank. He could have done a lot worse: he could have sent the worm blasting across the net, deleting every document on every machine. Thank God this kid wasn't malicious. Businesses and consumers ought to be beating down the doors at Microsoft. We all ought to be putting the blame squarely where it belongs: with the developers of the MS Windows operating system. They made this worm possible. Indeed, they opened the door for much much worse. Thank God for this kid for releasing his relatively tame worm before someone with truly sinister intent had a chance to wreak havoc. Don't send that kid to jail. Send him to college.