Witty: The Shape of Things to Come?

The Witty worm targeted a relatively small group of vulnerable machines - about 12,000 users of ISS's BlackIce and RealSecure products worldwide. However, commentators are pointing out that the attack was launched only 36 hours after the vulnerability was publicly announced, and it contained no significant bugs, implying that the attacker was a skilled programmer, familiar with worms, motivated and, because the payload of the worm is highly destructive, malicious.