Octopus Virus?

In The Art of Virus Resarch and Defense, the author mentions a type of virus called an "Octopus" which is briefly described as a virus that infects multiple machines, with the "head" of the virus at one machine and the "tail" at another. That sounds more like a snake than an octopus to me, so I went looking for more information.

So far, I've come up empty. I can find a virus using "Octopus" as part of its name, but no real description of what these things are and how they work. It may be buried in the aforementioned book somewhere; I haven't yet read the entire thing with full conentration and easily could have missed it the first time through.

If anyone reading this has any info, I'd be interested to know more.

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2 comments

Thu Feb 24 22:06:31 2005: 66   TonyLawrence


I found this definition at (link)
(link dead, sorry)


NETWORK WORMS consist of multiple parts which are called "segments". Each
segment can run on different machines, possibly doing different things. Network
Worms use the network to send segments from one machine to another. Network
worms that have one main segment which coordinates the work of the other
segments are sometimes called an"octopus."






Wed Aug 26 15:34:56 2009: 6792   TonyLawrence


This link: (link)

says this came from the science fiction novel "Shockwave Rider" by John Bruner.

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