This doesn't surprise me in the least. Kids were doing it in a crude way back when I was in high school. (They would get into time sharing systems, figure out ways to crash them or access executive accounts and create accounts for themselves).
The question is what is to be done about it. What troubles me is that when news like this is posted everyone here ignores it. There are a lot of network techies on this newsgroup and like it or not, as such they have a responsibility to at least think about these things in a global sense, not just to protect their own tiny piece of the kingdom.
Automated routines that constantly send out test-inquiry signals put a lot of wasted traffic on the Internet as well as waste computer time of recipients. Owners of personal networks tell me even their firewalls report constant attempts to breach.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We had some excitement today here on the CableOne system. Around 1 PM some damn fool customer 'gave birth' to a 'worm', thinking it would shut things down. Well, it did. About five minutes after he released the worm, CableOne gave a loud and boisterous 'hiccough'. The tech support center cleaned it up pretty fast, but a large number of their customers (including myself) got bumped in the process. All we could get was the 'registration page' which is always offered up when a new piece of equipment is put on someone's personal network (such as a router, etc). And, clicking on the 'registration page' returned a message saying 'registration is not available right now, try in a few minutes'. All of us who were affected had to reboot our entire systems, the cable modem of course, the routers and whatever. I guess CableOne identified who the moron customer was who did it and gave him much hell. I first discovered I was down when the local CableOne office here in town called me and said "the techs do not know what is going on just yet, but _everyone_ is getting that registration page and can't go further than that. We will call you back as soon as we get word." About five or ten minutes later, she called again and said to close it all down, reboot it and try again. I did, and all was fine.I wanted to know a bit more, of course, so I called the Phoenix tech support center. (Due to the commotions the hold time was about 20 minutes, which is quite unusual.) The techs told me about the 'hiccough' and said they were encouraging everyone to make certain they had the latest firewall and anti-malware stuff installed. PAT]