New Variant of Code Red Computer Virus Sighted

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Sunday August 5 7:13 PM ET

New Variant of Code Red Computer Virus Sighted

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A new and possibly more virulent version of the ``Code Red'' computer worm was detected circulating the Internet over the weekend, attacking machines and leaving them vulnerable to other intruders, a leading Internet security site reported.

The Systems Administration, Networking and Security Institute (SANS) said in an advisory on its Web site that the latest variant of the computer virus seems to leave a ``back door'' in infected systems that makes them easy for an intruder to infiltrate.

Code Red surreptitiously infects computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT or 2000 operating systems and its IIS Web server software and then makes infected machines scan the Internet for more victims.

If the new worm spreads as quickly as last week's Code Red outbreak, hundreds of thousands of Web sites could be left open to computer hackers. Machines that had already been ``patched'' with Microsoft software aimed at thwarting the virus were not vulnerable to the new Code Red, computer experts said.

The SANS Institute said several sources reported that the number of probes to their home networks had increased and that a new worm, similar to Code Red, started circulating on Saturday.

The Internet security Web site said the most obvious difference between previous variants of Code Red and the latest one was that Web server logs will record a GET request containing ``XXXXXX'' instead of the familiar ``NNNNNN'' of Code Red.

Code Red first became a threat in mid-July, when the worm hit some 350,000 machines, including the official White House Web site.

White House technicians had to change the IP address, the series of numbers and dots that identifies the physical address of each machine connected to the Internet, to avoid being shut down by the worm.

Last week, another version of the worm infected an estimated 300,000 computers worldwide, but it did not cause any measurable impact on Web performance.

Some undisclosed Web sites, however, had to be taken off-line because the worm halted or overloaded routers and systems. The worm also knocked out Web servers at companies of various sizes as it commandeered them to scan for new victims.

Last week's onslaught also disturbed Defense Department systems, Pentagon (news - web sites) officials said.

The worm spreads by latching onto computer servers and then randomly sending itself to 100 other IP addresses, which in turn start scanning the Internet for more computers to hit. Since the Internet has no national boundaries, the worm has quite likely spread globally, and hits have been reported in South Korea (news - web sites), France and Britain.

-- (news@of.note), August 06, 2001

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Sunday August 5 7:40 PM ET

Britain Issues Alert Over New Computer Worm

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain warned computer users on Sunday to beware of a new and potentially more dangerous variant of the Code Red worm, which infected hundreds of thousands of machines worldwide last week.

The new virus exploited the same vulnerability that allowed earlier worms to infect servers, but also installed a so-called ''Trojan Horse'' on infected systems, giving full remote control to computer hackers, officials said.

``Computer users may notice some localized disruption on the Internet, the precise scale of which is hard to predict,'' Britain's Home Office (interior ministry) said in a statement.

``Depending on how the 'Trojan' is exploited, far more serious disruption is possible. It could be used to attack the Internet infrastructure or to target specific sites.''

Code Red surreptitiously infects computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT or 2000 operating systems and its IIS Web server software and then makes infected machines scan the Internet for more victims.

The worm spread through the Information Technology community last week, but fears of cyber havoc were blunted by computer users who applied protective patches to their systems. An estimated 300,000 computers were infected after the worm re-awoke on August 1.

The Home Office advised that rebooting killed the worm on infected computers and applying a free software patch prevented future infection.

The patch for computers running Microsoft Corp's Windows NT and 2000 operating systems as well as its IIS software can be downloaded from various sites.

Windows 95, 98 and ME are not vulnerable to the virus.

In Los Angeles, a leading Internet security site said the new and possibly more virulent version of the ``Code Red'' computer worm was detected circulating the Internet at the weekend, attacking machines and leaving them vulnerable to other intruders.

The Systems Administration, Networking and Security Institute (SANS) said in an advisory on its Web site that the latest variant of the computer virus seemed to leave a ``back door'' in infected systems that made them easy for an intruder to infiltrate.

-- (news@of.note), August 06, 2001.


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