I actually like most of these worms, maybe its just the slight anarchist in me, but I love the idea of microsoft and its billions of dollars taking a beating at the hands of some 16 year old kid in his moms basement.
It is true that every OS has vulnerabilities, but even the hardest MS supporter has to admit windows has WAY more then most. Vulnerabilities primarily related to letting the very buggy Internet Explorer integrate itself so closely with the OS itself so every little exploit of the browser (or the mail program for that matter) is not issolated, far from it. This contrasts greatly with OSX and Linux (all UNIX systems really) that issolate programs from one another whenever possible and contain the spread of malicious viruses.
Yes Linux and OSX CAN be hacked, but there are a hell of a lot more walls in place so its A) harder to hack them and B) harder for the virus to really do some damage once its inside the OS.
But yah, I would love to give this guy a 5 dollar reward as would a lot of others impressed with his feat. If it pushes more businesses to the open source and/or Unix community so much the better.
Also these hackers help prepare companies for really serious threats from terrorits or hostile nations. If a 16 year old kid can bring down huge computer systems then what do you think a determined terrorist cell of computer engineers or a hostile Chinese intelligence agency could do? I mean I'm not saying that the most recent Die Hard is a likely scinereo, but is it so impossible that we don't have to worry about it?
PSN ID: ChosenOne feel free to add me
