Case Analysis: Espiritu & Baculo

- Your friend just told you that he is developing a worm to attack the administrative systems
at your college. The worm is “harmless” and will simply cause a message.
- “Lei’s Party!” to be displayed on all workstations on Friday afternoon at 3pm. By 4pm the
virus will erase itself & destroy all evidence of its presence. What would you say/do?

Identification of Main Issues\Problems

- The worm will replicate itself and affect the systems outside the target system or the
administrative systems.
- The worm to be created can potentially infect even the most sheltered facilities or the most
powerful systems in the world.
- Since it is a worm to be created, this stand-alone malicious program can propagate on its
own without any control.
- Knowing that a worm like this can damage systems with just one click, I would
discourage my friend who’ll be spreading the message through a worm because once
started, it could never be stopped.

Analysis of Issues

- Worms are stand-alone malicious programs that can self-replicate

- so it does not distinguish social condition, economic power, political position, or any
other difference\ they are there, waiting for a click, which will allow them to do what
they do best’ destroy everything in their way. (Soriano, 2019)
- It could propagate easily knowing that if the targeted system anonymously received a
message or an invitation such as a party invitation, it would indicate that a random
invitation would be a successful disguise for a worm. This way, it would spread easily. If
a system that received the worm, clothed as an invitation would be clicked or opened out
of curiosity, then and there, the worm will begin to do its harm.

Comments of Effective Strategies

- This self-help malicious software can spread rapidly by just one click. If a system that
received the worm happens to open the anonymous message, the worm will begin to
destroy.
- The worm was intended to infect each computer one time, but the worm was designed to
duplicate itself every seventh time a computer indicated it had already been infected to
make the worm more difficult to remove. The problem was that the speed of propagation
was underestimated. Once released, the worm quickly reinfected computers over and
over again until they were unable to function, and the internet came crashing down.
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 Republic Act 8792 or "Electronic Commerce Act"
Republic Act 10175 or the "Cybercrime Prevention Act"

Infection of IT systems with malware (including worms) is a criminal offence. It may be

punished as hacking under Republic Act 8792 or "Electronic Commerce Act" or as an offence
against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computer data systems under the
Republic Act 10175 or the "Cybercrime Prevention Act" (Villadolid & Ferrer, 2018)