The main purpose of intrusion detection system (IDS) is to find out intrusions among normal audit data and this can be considered as a classification problem. This problem is brought about by the user datagram protocol (UDP) which is a connectionless protocol that means it does not require a formal handshake to get the data flowing and has no need for SYNs, ACKs, FINs flags, or any other handshaking. Worms also make use of UDP protocol to connect or scan with other hosts. In this research, UDP scanning worm detection (UDPSWD) was proposed to detect UDP worm scanning by checking the failure message connections. UDPSWD focuses on the internet control message protocol (ICMP) unreachable, ICMP time exceeded and UDP is not responded to. The results show that UDPSWD is faster in comparison to other techniques, with no false positive or negative alarm. Copyright 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.