With the posting Wednesday of proof-of-concept exploit code for one of the newly discovered vulnerabilities in Windows, the familiar chain of events that often leads to the release of a worm has begun.

The cycle began Tuesday when Microsoft Corp. released its monthly passel of patches, including one for a flaw in the Workstation service in Windows 2000 and XP. A successful exploitation would give the attacker complete control of the compromised PC, Microsoft said.

Less than 24 hours after Microsoft issued the fix, a member of the BugTraq security mailing list posted exploit code for the vulnerability. The author said the code had been tested only on a Windows 2000 machine with Service Pack 4 installed and the FAT32 file system running. However, experts said it would take little effort to adapt the code for other Windows machines.

And, more importantly, the Workstation vulnerability appears to be a prime candidate for a worm.

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