By Kate Hanaghan, 31 July 2001 13:02
NEWS For days the clock has been ticking, counting down to midnight tonight. We've been warned about the Code Red worm and the goody-goodies - or the just plain sensible - have the necessary patch and are safe. The lazy - and perhaps the ignorant - could be in for a nasty ride. Over the weekend the FBI warned Code Red poses "a real and present threat to the internet" and could start clogging-up vulnerable servers overnight. Of course the threat has been extensively hyped, these kinds of hazards always are, but this doesn't mean the end of the world is nigh. Equally, there's no room for complacency. Reports have estimated that around 300,000 computers have already been infected this month and it's quite possible the time-sensitive wriggly blighter will disrupt thousands of servers with denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, grinding web traffic to a halt. On the other hand we might only see a bit of web page defacement and a lot of very sweaty overworked systems administrators. We can blame a whole raft of people in the industry for the initial spread of the worm, administrators who should have known better, vendors - okay, Microsoft - who make products which are insecure, and of course the individual that set it loose in the first place. Whatever happens tonight, just make sure your company has the patch to avoid any unnecessary hassle.
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