Suppose, in a scenario based on a true story, a network computer virus is designed so as soon as it is copied onto a computer, X, it simply copies itself to six of X's neighboring computers, each time using a random file name, so as to evade detection. The virus itself does no other harm, in that it doesn't read any other files and it doesn't delete or modify any other files either. What harm

would be done by such a virus and how would it be detected?

What will be an ideal response?

This problem is based on the true story of the Cornell graduate student, Robert
Morris. His virus (which is more properly called a "worm") brought the entire Internet to
its knees. The reason is that when the virus copies itself to X's neighbors, they will copy
it back six times to X, which then copies 36 copies to its neighbors, and so on. Soon all of
X's disk memory is full of copies of the virus and X crashes. So this is a type of denial of
service attack.