Slammer Sparks Security Debate

The security researcher whose code was used as a template for the Slammer worm is now reconsidering his position on releasing sample exploit code.

David Litchfield, co-founder of Next Generation Security Software Ltd., in Surrey, England, said in a post to the BugTraq mailing list Wednesday that he's concerned that some future code of his could be used in a worm that does far more damage than Slammer.

"We often forget that our actions online can have very real consequences in real life," Litchfield wrote. "The next big worm could take out enough critical machines that people are killed. A massive failure of the emergency services computers such as 911/999 could result in someone's death - and I don't want to feel that I've contributed to that."

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