all this talk about the new worms lately has got me thinking...

what if someone were to write a program for a self-mutating worm/virus?

thatd cause a whole heap a trouble

anyway, after reading that some of you are softway engineers and programmers and such, just wondered what some you guys might think of such a creature
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The problem is you would need to be able to make it smart enough for that, and thats a lot of code compared to a small parasite. The core diffrerences in the code to be able to "slip past" scanning would mean the software would need to be able to write a copy of itself, that does everything it does damage-wise, as well as modify this code enough so that it is not seen as a copy.

I'm not a programmer now, dabbled in it years ago, so it might be a lot easier than it used to be, but it's pretty tricky to do in any kind of size that would be usefull.

I am a software developer, and while what you are describing is possible, in fact there have been mutating virus programs already. But the very nature of a software program makes easy to detect.

Every system has a flaw, every program has a flaw. Anything you can encrypt, can be hacked (given enough time). For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The same is true in programming.

I can write code, that writes more code. I can write code that mutates itself with every incarnationm but somewhere there will be a signature that a virus detection will be able to pick up on. The very nature of a virus program is to prey on a systems weaknesses. Those weaknesses are also the weakness in the virus code and what will allow someone to catch it. Sure it could be ugly for awhile and cause general chaos, but it will eventually be caught and fixed.