Sasser is a successful and widely propagating worm with a somewhat benign impact to the end user. But people should absolutely remove it.

Its transmission technique is somewhat similar to Melissa. Once launched, it downloads an executable backdoor program from one of four Web sites. That program, Win_bug6, steals passwords stored on that computer and sends them to an e-mail address in the Philippines.

The problem is that Netscape's implementation of Java did not adhere to Java Sandbox guidelines, which is basically designed to protect users from Java code.

There hasn't been a global solution yet to this problem. If hackers can shut down Yahoo!, they can shut down anything they want tomorrow.

It's a serious risk, although the threat has not manifested itself, but it's brand new.

We haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. We're paying attention to any sites that may go down.