It's said bad news travels fast. And, it appears, so do bad guys.

A new study indicates that the bad guys on the Internet move quickly when it comes to setting up computer attacks that take advantage of security holes.

A security report from the IBM Corporation says a growing number of attacks come within 24 hours of a vulnerability being disclosed. That means such security flaws are being taken advantage of well before many people even have had time to learn there's a problem.

The study, being released today, looks at two growing trends in Internet-based threats. One is that rather than look for security holes themselves, crooks launch attacks when vulnerabilities are made public. The other is that security experts are debating over how much information should be released to the public when a new software flaw is discovered.