Ethical Worm

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Ethical Worm Mean?

An ethical worm is a type of software that is replicated and sent to various systems over the Internet, in order to fix security vulnerabilities or provide security patches. Companies may offer an ethical worm in order to promote speedier universal closure of some kind of security loophole, when individual system administrators may not act quickly enough to protect their systems against a threat.

Techopedia Explains Ethical Worm

One way to think about an ethical worm is as the opposite or reverse of a worm-type virus. Instead of infecting computers and damaging systems, the ethical worm invades computers in order to protect systems. There are still a lot of questions about the use of ethical worms in relation to privacy and individual administrative autonomy. However, ethical worms are one tool for the security community to help protect a range of systems against cyberattacks.

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.