Even MS Servers Contaminated with Code Red

Code Red virus, widespread in Korea, is found to be much more malignant than anticipated in US, Japan and China. It exercised strong destroying power, invading various server computers of business and public offices.

On August 8, Microsoft, US software manufacturing company, announced that the server computers of MSN hotmail (e-mail service), which MS operates, were contaminated. The servers of communication companies, such as America-on-Line (AOL) TimeWarner, AT&T, Cox, Excite-at-Home, Quest, were also contaminated.

Their data transfer speeds were slowed down and some services had to be stopped.

In China, at least 180 server computers are known to have been contaminated as of August 8. In particular, the information technology (IT) businesses in Beijing were seriously damaged.

Japanese IT business association under Department of Economy and Industry of Japan said on August 6, ``Although there were just 3 official reports of the accidents related to the contamination, it is likely that thousands of servers have been contaminated based on various information we collected.``

Deborah Weierman, spokesperson of National Infrastructure Protection Center of FBI, said in a press conference on August 8, ``Code Red is virulent computer worm virus with strong destroying power. Since last weekend, two mutants were newly spread. Thus, special caution needs to be taken for computers.``

Computer Economics, Computer virus research institute, estimated that the cost of recovering the contaminated networks from Code Red would reach 2 billion dollars, which is much larger than the originally estimated 1.2 billion dollar.

mickey@donga.com