Researchers find worm infecting blogs

Internet security researchers have found a new worm infecting blogs worldwide.

The blog worm, found at http://www.moox.nl/blogworm/, is currently being propagated manually by bloggers who are copying HTML code from the author's website and integrating it into their blogs.

The code includes a cute animated graphic of what appears to be a computer bug that says, "Hello," along with other messages, including how many blogs have already been infected.

The code also points back to the blog worm author's blog website.

This worm blog has apparently infected about 5,000 blogs, including one maintained by news.com, the author says in its website.

The blog worm also hopes to infect the real world through merchandising. It now sells t-shirts on the website.

The worm is actually an animated GIF image. Bloggers all over have embedded it in their blogs and link to the creator's Web site. To infect your blog, you have to copy and paste a piece of HTML code into your blog.

A blog entry on news.com (http://news.com.com/2061-10789_3-6031795.html) said that this might be funny.

"But on the flipside, however, there could be some security implications if the hoster of this worm decided to upload a malicious image that took control of the PC's that visit sites that show it. (Or if the hoster's site was hacked.)," the news.com blog posting said.

News.com quoted blog worm author Robin Schuil as saying that there are no malicious plans with the blog worm.

"However, it is a self mutating worm. From day to day it will say different things," the author told news.com.