While acting as a user, the worm might have deleted or overwritten files, distributed them elsewhere, or encrypted them and held them for ransom. The Internet worm despatched a shock wave by way of the Internet neighborhood, which at that time was largely populated by teachers and researchers. The affected websites closed a number of the loopholes exploited by the worm and customarily tightened safety. COPS, an automatic security-checking program, was developed to check for a number of the identical flaws the worm exploited. However, as time passes and lots of new installations proceed to join the Internet, security analysts checking for site vulnerabilities find that most of the similar security flaws still exist. A new assault on the Internet wouldn’t succeed on the identical scale as the Internet worm, but it may still cause vital inconvenience to many.