Their social engineering tactic normally involve displaying fictitious security scan results, threat notices, and other deceptive tactics in an effort to manipulate users into purchasing fake security software or licenses in order to remove potential threats that have supposedly infected their systems. Rogue scanners, also known as fake scanners, fake AV, or rogueware, are pieces of code injected into legitimate sites or housed in fake sites. This method tend to spread worms a lot quicker. Not only can it spread copies of itself via text messages, IMs can also be used to spread this malware via its P2P sharing capabilities. This is another popular method used by worms. Via instant messengers (IMs) networks.Compromised sites may harbor certain variants of worms that are capable of looking for security holes. For example, MySpace has been affected by an XSS-type worm.

Some worm variants have propagated within known social sites.

Worms in P2P file networks have been difficult to detect. However, such an activity is exploited by worms. Some Internet users have been known to use P2P applications like eMule and Kazaa to share files with friends and family. Via peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks.This way, systems where these devices can be connected to will be affected as well. Some worm variants can copy themselves onto devices, such as USB sticks and external hard drives, which are attached to an already affected system. Spam mail sent usually involve some social engineering tactics for greater chances of infection. These machines are capable of spamming messages to random or targeted recipients, with the worm file as its attachment. This payload transforms the affected system into a zombie/bot machine and connects it to a botnet. Some worm variants can drop other malware, such as backdoors. Once a hole is detected, it infiltrates that system, and then it performs its malicious duties.

Some worm variants look for security holes on systems via installed unpatched software. Worms can spread themselves in a number of ways:

Dns worm virus