Mikhailovsky said reports that a worm had been developed were a “complete lie,” blaming them on inaccurate translations of a Russian-language weblog maintained by Arhont’s Andrew Vladimirov. “Let me assure that there has been no development nor the desire to develop such code,” Mikhailovsky said. The reports had fueled discussion on security-related mailing lists about a router worm’s potential impact on Internet infrastructure. Mikhailovsky and Vladimirov are co-authors of “Wi-Foo: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking” and are preparing a new book on hacking Cisco networks.

The security of IOS has been a hot topic since a July presentation at the DefCon convention by Mike Lynn, who outlined potentially serious vulnerabilities in IOS.