Academic literature describes a method for distributing benevolent patches "in which every newly patched node forwards the patches to some or all of its neighbors" [1]. This way, the patch might spread faster than it would if users/admins had to manually update their system to apply the patch ("centralized" patch dissemination).

This is termed distributed patch dissemination [1], countermeasure competing strategy [2], epidemic vaccine propagation [3], or patch forwarding [4] by various authors. I believe the countermeasures for the Creeper worm were distributed in a worm called Reaper [5], although I can't find a lot of information on this.

Has distributed patch dissemination ever been used or seriously considered since Creeper/Reaper? Could this strategy actually work?

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0137858

[2]: https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMCB.2003.817098

[3]: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys177

[4]: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apm.2016.10.028

[5]: https://corewar.co.uk/creeper.htm