Remember Ferris Buller’s Day Off, where plucky Matthew Broderick bedevils his principal, played to a slow-burn perfection by Jeffrey Jones? The movie is a pretty funny example of the 80’s teen movie where teenagers run circles around befuddled, clueless adults. The modern day Ferris Buller is apparently a German teenager who created the Netsky-P computer worm. Netsky-P has disrupted tens of thousands of PCs worldwide, accounting for nearly one-fourth of all virus incidents reported, according to Sophos. In a report looking at 2004 virus incidents reported through November, Netsky-P remained the world’s most widely reported virus, 8 months after its discovery. Sasser, a worm that spreads through the Internet, not email. Sophos said it was also seeing a new type of “phishing” attack in 2004. Instead of luring computer users to a fake Web site to steal their banking and credit-card details as in a traditional “phishing” attack, the new wave of phishers use Trojan Horses to lie in wait for users to visit real banking Websites and then secretly record login processes. Computer companies have been making a lot of moves to make computer networks immune from intrusion, but obviously there are still plenty of issues. Likewise, law enforcement has been busy. They have arrested the 18-year-old German who has confessed to the Sasser worm and is accused of creating the pesky Netsky. But it is pretty obvious that it is not time to drop your guard. And the difference between computer security and Ferris Buller’s Day Off? Ferris Buller was funny. Anyone who has tried to get rid of the Netsky worm knows funny is the last thing you think about. Security