According to Slashdot, a new variant of the Sanity worm is out, except this one patches to prevent it. Even good hacking isn’t a good thing. It’s still illegal and shouldn’t be done.
But government agencies should really start looking into such a thing. It’s obviously possible. There’s enough exploits in most software that a similar task could be accomplished. US-CERT among others should be researching the possibility of such tactics. A well designed worm can actually counter the effects of a very harmful one.
Even firemen have learned that fire is not only their enemy, but their friend. Fire is often used to put out fires… when strategically placed they can be a very effective tool against forest fires.