Security firm Sophos has reacted negatively to the news, suggesting that it glamorises the writing of potentially malicious code (despite the fact that this worm, in particular, wasn’t malicious) and arguing that there are probably more talented, law-abiding coders who could have been given the job.

There are a number of issues here. Firstly, anyone who jailbreaks their iPhone is opening themselves up to a greater risk of malware and other undesired software, particularly if they don’t bother to do basic housekeeping tasks such as changing default passwords.

Secondly, many organisations already hire hackers, because (whatever you think of them) there’s no denying they have talents that perhaps standard programmers and security staff don’t have.

Towns may not be the most proficient programmer, but is it really surprising that he’s been hired? It’s all publicity for the developer, too.

So you might be wondering who would be so mad that he would be willing to give that much money away…take a guess?  You probably didn’t have to think much.  Who else would be so affected by a worm?  The software giant, Microsoft, has always been prone to attacks from such malware and sees the Conficker as a “criminal attack.”  According to George Stathakopulos of the company’s Trustworthy Computing Group, “people who write this malware have to be held accountable.”  Hence the reward for whoever could find the person behind the worm.

I doubt that you have not heard of the worm before but for the benefit of those who might not have, Conficker takes advantage of computers which are not updated with regard to Windows security patches.  It is a self-replicating program and can infect computers via the Internet or those innocent looking USB sticks you use on a daily basis.  And once the worm has found its way to your hard drive, it is quite hard to remove as it immediately finds ways to burrow a hole and set up defences to keep itself safe.  Once set up, the worm can be used to steal data, among other things.

Now back to the reward.  Do you think that they will ever catch the perps this time?  Remember, they still have rewards up in the air for the creators of three other worms – Blaster, MyDoom and Sobig.